Exploratio evangelica : a brief examination of the basis and origin of Christian belief

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EXPLOEATIO EVANGELICA

EXPLOEATIO EVANGELICA

A BRIEF EXAMINATION

OF THE

BASIS AND ORIGIN OF CHRISTIAN BELIEF

PERCY GARDNER, Litt. D.

Le de-placement du christiauisme de la lvgion historique dans la
region psychologique est le vceu de notre epoque. — H. F. Amiel.

NEW YORK: G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
LONDON: ADAM AND CHARLES BLACK

1899

-U

THE NEW YORK
PUBLIC LIBRARY

578956A

ASTOR, LENOX AND

TILDEN FOUNDATIONS

R 1932 L

PREFACE

It is perhaps due to readers of this book that I should here
enter into a brief explanation of its purport, and the conditions
under which it is written. It is essentially the work of a
feyman. The writer has felt acutely the stress of the revived
interest in the problems of theology and religion which marks
our age and country. And having, in the quieter intervals of
a life mainly devoted to the study of ancient history and
archaeology, arrived at certain views in regard to the psychology
and the history of religion, he has by degrees thrown some
of these views into the form of a treatise on the origin of
Christianity. He speaks for himself alone, having no claim to
represent a school, either at Oxford or elsewhere.

The present work cannot fairly be called destructive ; nor
is it primarily constructive, but rather critical. It may
perhaps most appropriately be compared to the operations
which precede construction, to the investigation of the ground
and the digging of trenches with a view to foundations. It
is of the nature of Prolegomena. Hence it is written for
students ; and I have not tried to make its style attractive ; I
have aimed only at clearness and precision. In a field so im-
perfectly lighted and so full of pitfalls it is a gain if one can
move at all.

Hence the title Exploratio Evangdica. In college days I
owed much to a work by Professor John Grote called Ejyploratio
Pliilosophica, an attempt to feel a way towards philosophic

EXP LOR A T10 E V ANGELIC A

truth along certain lines. Some of the qualities of Grote's
work, impartiality, candour, the determination neither to
exaggerate nor to undervalue, have marked more recent
philosophic work at Cambridge ; and I have tried to preserve
these qualities in the present book. It is in the truest sense
an cxploratio, no exposition of a ready-made creed, no attempt
to fix some new scheme of doctrine, but a psychologic and
historic investigation of the origins of Christianity, partly with
a view to the possibilities of belief among the new surround-
ings of our times. It is in no self-confident spirit, but after
many shrinkings and hesitations, that I publish it. No one
can feel more acutely the limitations of the author than does
the author himself. The scheme of the book is necessarily so
large that scarcely any one writer could work it out with real
mastery. But friends assure me that it is no small compensation
for all defects that I am able to approach theological subjects with
some practice in history and archaeology, and without visible bias.
My daily work and my means of living are in no way connected
with the acceptance of this or that system of belief. A lay-
man's only excuse for writing about religion is that he finds
the subject of absorbing interest, and that he is able to survey
the history of religion with faculties trained in other fields of
observation. Mr. A. C. Headlam observes in a recent work,
" A mind trained in an archaeological method will be trained to
interpret a book historically, and not to use it controversially."
If my acquaintance with the history of Christianity is mainly
confined to the first two centuries of our era, this at any rate
removes one of the principal causes of bias in theological
writers, who necessarily have a tendency to read the earliest
Christian history in the light of later developments.

It has been accessary to confine my work to a small part
of the field of religion. To begin with I have1 dealt only with
Christianity, and with other religions as influencing it.
Almost the whole of Hellenic religion, in which 1 have a

PREFACE vii

special interest, is thus shut out, as well as Buddhism and
[slam. And in speaking of Christianity, I have been obliged
to confine myself to its creed, and to leave aside all questions
of ritual and art, of organisation and discipline. I have also
fell it necessary to confine my investigation almost entirely to
the first century of Christian history. I would ask readers to
judge my work by what it contains rather than by what it
dors not contain. As it is, I have trespassed with imperfect
knowledge into many fields; and I can only ask the specialists
in possession of those fields to pardon a presumption which
was necessary, from my point of view if not from theirs.

It may be convenient to readers that I should briefly
indicate to what schools of thought I owe most. By birth and
training an Evangelical Christian, I became at Cambridge a
pupil of Maurice. But though I have greatly valued con-
verse with him and with many other distinguished theologians,
I have been on the whole more influenced by books than by
men. In the field of psychology I am Kantian or Neo-Kantian,
with a special debt to Mill and to Mansel. In the field of
anthropology I owe most to Eobertson Smith and Dr. Tylor.
As regards the early history of Christianity, I have tried to
follow the best writers, such as Harnack, Lightfoot, the Eevilles,
and Schiirer. For many years the writings of Auguste Comte
exercised a great influence over me, both in the way of
attraction and of repulsion. Convictions as to the great
importance of criticism in religious matters I owe to Matthew
Arnold, in my opinion the greatest critic of our age. Since
this book was written, I have been delighted to find in how
many psychologic views I agree with Prof. Sabatier of Paris,
and in how many with Prof. W. James of Harvard.

The general tendency of this book is to transfer the burden
of support of Christian doctrine from history to psychology,
perhaps rather from the history of facts to the history of ideas.
There is great truth in Amiel's saying, " What our age

EXP LO RATIO EVANGELIC A

especially needs is a translation of Christianity from the domain
of history to the domain of psychology." Much the same view
was expressed by Mr. Jowett in the words, " Eeligion is not
dependent on historical events, the report of which we cannot
altogether trust. Holiness has its sources elsewhere than in
history."

To make an index to a work of this kind is almost an
impossibility. In place of attempting the impossible, I have
given in the last chapter a brief summary of the whole book,
with reference to chapters. This will serve also as a detailed
table of contents.

I have to acknowledge personal help in dealing with proofs
from Mr. Estlin Carpenter, Mr. Vernon Bartlet, and my sister,
Miss Alice Gardner. Of course none of these friends is
responsible for any statement in the book.

PERCY GARDNER.

Oxford, September 1899.

CONTENTS

BOOK I.

FIRST PRINCIPLES

1. The Present State of Religious Doctbine
■1. The Inspiration ok Conduct

3. The Practical Grounds of Belief

4. Experience and Doctrine .

5. Doctrine and Metaphysics

6. Relative Religion

7. The Inspiration of History

8. The Test of Ideas
0. Idea and Myth .

1 0. The Outgrowths of Myth .

1
13
26
33
47
57
71
86
94
108

BOOK II.

EAELY CHRISTIAN HISTORY

11. The Christian ( "heed

12. Early Christian History .

13. The Gospels .....

14. Style in the Evangelists .
Note 1. M. Reville's Jesus de Nazareth

Note 2. M. Sabatier's Vie de 8. Francois

-»

15. Jesus as Messiah ....

16. The Ethics of Jesus ....

17. The Sayings and Parables of Jesus .

118
126

144
159
172
171
177
192
203

EX PL OR A TJO E V ANGELIC A

CHAT.

18. Christian Miracle .......

19. The Birth at Bethlehem ......

Note. Mr. Gore and Professor Ramsay on the Birth

20. The Physical Resurrection and Ascension

21. The Descent into Hades ......

22. The Second Advent .......

PAGE

218
234

247
255
263

275

BOOK III.
EARLY CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE

23. The Crisis op Christianity

. 289

24. Early Christian Literature

. 300

25. Idea and Doctrine

. 312

26. Christianity and the Thiasi

. 325

27. The Influence of Philosophy

. 346

28. The Criticism of Doctrine

. 358

29. Sacrifice in Christianity .

. 372

30. The Incarnation

. 385

31. The Atonement

. 398

32. The Exalted Christ .

. 408

33. The Holy Spirit

. 419

34. The Future Life

. 4 29

35. Baptism ....

. 443

36. The Communion .

. 451

37. The Inspiration of Scripture

. 463

38. The Catholic Church

. 484

39. The Corporate Consciehoe

. 497

10. Summary ....

. 510

CHAPTER I

THE PRESENT STATE OF RELIGIOUS DOCTRINE

EVERY form of religious belief lias in our days to submit to
new and severe tests. The spread of scientific methods in
every branch of historical science, and the encroachments of
criticism, are shaking all the theological views of which the
foundation is at all insecure. Like the historical sciences, like
economics and philology and archaeology, theology too has to
stand the weight of the storm, and it behoves us all to look to
our foundations, and to be sure that the doctrinal abodes in
which our ancestors dwelt securely are able to resist the
severer stress of changed intellectual conditions.

The greater severity of modern historical method tells in
three ways principally. First, in a closer criticism of books
and of documentary evidence. We have learned to put all
documents to severer tests, to regard them with greater sus-
picion, to be more sceptical in regard to their authenticity and
their value. That an ancient writer has a good style and a
fine turn for morality no longer suffices to make us accept his
statements blindfold. And we now realise to what an immense
degree almost all the writers of ancient history have been
under the influence of bias.

Secondly, we have imported from the biologic sciences into
those which are historic, the profound idea of evolution.
Criticism of documents is essentially a destructive process, and
as applied to ancient history it might readily lead us to com-
plete agnosticism. But the theory of evolution is constructive.

EX PLO RATIO EVANGEL1CA

If we can establish a few fixed points in history, we can now
venture to draw the lines of development from one to another
of these. Events of the past no longer stand isolated, but are
colligated into groups, and so become far more easy to deal
with. Yet though the principle of evolution be essentially
constructive, it is very destructive of much that has hitherto
passed as history. It minimises all that implies non-continuity
in history, abolishes cataclysms, sees orderly sequence where
before there had appeared only disjointed juxtapositions. It
seeks not mere occasions but causes ; not mere events but
principles. The growth of mankind ceases to resemble the
successive scenes of a panorama, and becomes biologic, like the
growth of a tree, though of course the working of great
personalities in the past must always maintain in history a
certain amount of inexplicable variation.

Thirdly, in the writing of history in our days there is far
less of bias, of deliberate preference, than there has been
hitherto. No doubt a complete absence of bias is practically
unattainable, and were it attained the historian would pro-
bably be dull beyond dullness. But undoubtedly we at least
endeavour to be more judicial. No one now would deem it
right to construct a fanciful history of the past on a mere
skeleton of fact in order to illustrate a thesis or enforce a moral.
Yet this has been a custom among historians. The light and
shade in history are becoming less obtrusive, and a gray light
of sobriety and moderation is spreading over the scene.

It is sufficiently clear that the introduction of these new
customs into the domain of the history of religion must have a
subversive effect. In criticising documents we have to begin
with the Bible itself, and criticism of the Bible soon leads
the critic to somewhat startling views. And in accepting the
history of religion as on the whole a fairly continuous de-
velopment, though marked by crises, we necessarily altogether
change our view of the rise of Christianity. We see that it
did not spring fully developed from the head of the Founder,
but gradually took form, absorbing a number of existing beliefs
and tendencies, though it was [he spirit of the Founder which
drew these together and started them ou a changed line of
progress.

THE PRESENT STATE OF RELIGIOUS DOCTRINE 3

The result of such changes in the method of historical
study is that we soon discover that a great part of the histori-
cal substratum which is supposed to support many of the
doctrines and beliefs of Christianity is in a ruinous condition.

It has become necessary to seek elsewhere than in the
supposed facts of ancient history a sufficient foundation for
( Ihristian faith.

It is quite clear that the new criticism of the liible is
a "renter danger to the Protestant than to the Catholic
schools of theology. For the Catholic does not primarily base
his religion on the Bible, but on the Church. And the appli-
cation of the doctrine of development to the history of the
Church, however little it may lie in the line of past Catholic
teaching, does not seem to be altogether an impossibility.
Newman notoriously lias attempted it, though with very im-
perfect success. But any application of the doctrine of develop-
ment to the Bible necessarily does away with its infallibility
and its verbal inspiration. And it was on Scripture that the
Protestant schools of theology built their systems. In throw-
ing the Bible into historic perspective modern criticism
necessarily changes the original basis of the whole Protestant
theology, and compels it to seek for a new foundation.

This would, I think, scarcely be disputed by any one who
looked calmly on facts. But mankind have an extraordinary
power of declining to see facts which are inconvenient. And
it is not only to Pagan but also to Christian belief and custom
that the pregnant phrase of Servius applies, " In sacris simulata
pro veris accipi." The whole history of Christian beliefs is a
history of illusions, of compromises, of half truths taken for
whole truths, and outworn doctrines patched to look like new.
So the great majority of Protestant theologians, though they
have lost their once sufficient and logical basis, contrive to
keep together enough of it for a standing ground. In place of
the infallibility of Scripture they accept something as like in-
fallibility as gray is like black ; in place of verbal inspiration
they put inspiration of some other kind or degree which will
serve as a working theory.

It would be both presumptuous and foolish to condemn these
compromises except from the strictly logical standing ground.

EXP LO RATIO EVANGEL1CA

Religion is in the main a matter of conduct, and any theory
which will bear a superstructure of honest life and noble deed
is, as a working hypothesis, justified. But speaking from the
logical point of view only, it seems quite clear that if Scripture
is to be the ultimate arbiter in matters of faith and doctrine,
Scripture must be taken as the direct word of the Most High.
The admission that human frailty and folly have a share in
the words of Scripture at once deprives them of the position of
a final court of appeal. Even the words of our Lord himself can-
not be reasonably regarded as infallible, because they are set down
by a fallible reporter, who may have mistaken or garbled them.

It is not strange that the most earnest, and therefore most
sincere, of Evangelical theologians have in recent years sought
for some authority to supplement, even in some degree to replace,
the waning authority of Scripture. Some, like the great Oxford
Cardinal, have sought it in the Church of Rome, in which a
visible infallible Pope certainly offers a marvellous refuge to
those who must have a final authority at any intellectual cost.
Other theologians have taken a diametrically opposite course,
and despairing altogether of outward authority have sought
it within in the recesses of the conscience, or, as they
would prefer to say, in communion with Christ in heaven.
But such religion suffers from all the dangers of extreme
subjectivity and individualism.

The schools of theology which lie between these extremes
can scarcely be said to occupy a steadfast position. The
energy of the Church of England seems to lie mainly in the
High Church section of it. The position of this party, though
it includes many admirable men, seems to me weak on the
side of history : and what is worse, it has not the support of
educated laymen, very few of whom have any sympathy with
its theories, and who are indeed year by year more and more
giving up tin- practice of church-going. The orthodox dis-
ters, many of them very liberal and enlightened, are as a
whole ten much committed to the infallibility of Scripture to
1"' in a sale position aniid the growing stress of historic
criticism.

It is notable how modest and apologetic is the tone of
many intelligenl preachers in church and in chapel. A large

THE PRESENT STATE OF RELIGIOUS DOCTRINE 5

proportion of the discourses one hears are gentle deprecations,
arguments to Bhow that the non-religions view of life is not
completely satisfactory, or thai after all something is to be
said for faith and hope. Sometimes arguments againsl Huxley
or Herbert Spencer, who unfortunately are not present to be
convinced, take the place of the positive teaching of religion.
Surely it is not by any such defensive warfare that the ground
which religion has lost among as is to be reconquered. If there
be any value or truth in Christianity at all, it can claim more
than mere toleration.

In our days there are also many who fancy that it is possible
for religion to grow and prosper without any sort of doctrine.
Such a notion has prompted the foundation, especially in
America, of so-called ethical societies, the members of which
think that they may agree in principles of conduct, while
differing in philosophic and religious views. Such fancies
show imperfect knowledge of the nature of conduct. We
may, it' we choose, blindly follow the customs of our fathers, or
we may follow the fancies of the moment, but if we at all
endeavour to think about our conduct, and direct it by some
higher law, we must of necessity at once set about framing
religious doctrine. Doctrines are principles of action expressed
in intellectual form, ami no man can have any principles of
action and reflect upon them, without holding religious doctrine.
It is true that in the fervour of a great religious revival,
doctrine may be still in embryo. And it is true that in the
presence of a mighty spiritual leader of men, his direct com-
mands may be taken as principles of action, and not expressed
in terms of the intellect. But in ordinary times and among
thoughtful men, religious doctrine is as necessary to the
healthy and normal development of a community as are faith
and self-denial. In the expressive language of Matthew
Arnold, the Hellenic side of our nature requires satisfaction as
well as the Hebraic side, and any non-recognition of this fact
tends to a one-sided growth, to fanaticism and excess. Tenny-
son has given countenance to the prevailing notion in his
lines,

There lives more faith in honest doubt,
Believe me, than in half the creels.

EX PLO RATIO EVANGELICA

And yet Tennyson's creed, short as it was, included the
doctrine of personal immortality, a doctrine involving enormous
assumptions.

The necessity of a creed in religion is imperative. But
its place and its functions are commonly misapprehended. It
is usually supposed that doctrines can be and should be
intellectually proved ; and that those who thus receive them
may be expected to carry them out in their lives. This is
a radically mistaken view of the relations between know-
ledge and practice, which has its roots in the teaching of
Plato and has descended in unbroken line down to the Utili-
tarians of our day. Some philosophic schools have always held
knowledge to be the source of action, and action the outcome
of knowledge. And such may sometimes be the order of things
in the case of a very few of the highly educated. But not
such is the order among the great mass of men, better and
worse. With them impulse and feeling precede alike thought
and action.

So in the case of religion. Its ideas and principles are
partly inherited, partly received by a sort of contagion from
fellowmen, and in part directly revealed to men by the
higher Power. And having received in the heart these ideas
and principles men have two things to do : first, to act in
accordance with them, and, second, to justify them to the
intellect. In the course of the second of these processes
doctrine is formulated. As feeling cools, doctrine is deposited
like crystals. And it is of value, not so much for the direction
as for the justification or the testing of conduct. When a
man meets his principles of action writ large in the courts of
reason, he can better judge whether they are worthy, whether
they are suitable to human life, whether they are of divine
origin. But the ordinary man, if he starts with the mere
intellectual investigation of doctrine, will never be able thence
to derive principles of action. He will probably end as a
complete sceptic or agnostic, and as one who confesses his-
life to be directed to no conscious purpose.

Doctrine then, though ii dues not precede religious ideas,
is a necessary corollary of them in the mind of every man
who reflects. Every reflecting man must needs endeavour to

THE PRESENT STATE OF RELIGIOUS DOCTRINE 7

put his religious doctrines on terms with the rest of his intel-
lectual furniture. And since in recent years our intellectual
furniture has completely changed, the old doctrines find them-
selves out of place in its midst

The sickly hue which is spread over the face of modern
civilisation arises mainly, as is indeed generally recognised.
from the fact that for the time the forces of negation have
gained among us the upper hand over those of construction.
This state of things has arisen principally from the rapid
changes which have taken place in all our surroundings,
physical, intellectual and moral. Like the proverhial rolling
Btone we gather no moss : in fact the strata which should form
a solid basis for life and growth are becoming like the banks
1 >i pebbles thrown up by the sea on the shore, masses of rounded
Btones constantly moving, and giving no foothold to vegetable
or animal existence. This condition of the civilised world
cannot last very long ; we tell ourselves day and night that
our time is a time of transition, and so it is undoubtedly.
Meantime while we watch for and foster the germs of a new
order, we may also endeavour to preserve what is worthy of
permanence in the order of the past, yet exists only in a state
of progressive dissolution and decay.

The spiritual chaos which has succeeded the cosmos of
Christian faith is no isolated phenomenon, but one of a class.
It has analogies on all sides. The present is no place for
working out these analogies. Yet we may briefly mention
some of them as we pass. A confusion not less complete than
that of the religious world prevails in art and in politics. In
painting, the closer and more accurate observation of nature
which is the result of the progress of science, and the invention
of photography, have destroyed many of the conventions
which made painting attractive and interesting. There are
among us a number of artists each with a style of his own,
but no generally recognised principles of a really constructive
kind. In place of an orderly succession of schools we find an
anarchy, where every man maintains himself by the skill of
his own hand, while the mass of mankind has ceased to judge
works of painting by any recognised standard. In the world of
politics also disintegration has proceeded with rapid steps.

8 EXPLORATIO EVANGELICA

Democracy advances every year over the ruins of some old and
honoured institution, levelling every inequality, as the sea levels
the ramparts which children construct on the sand. Yet many
germs of order are appearing. It has been well said that we
are now all socialists. And the true meaning of the phrase is
that all who reflect see the necessity of some new social organisa-
tion based upon a consideration of the general good, to take
the place of the organisation of mere traditional privilege
which is rapidly passing away. We all are looking eagerly for
some refuge from the dead waste of infinite individual competi-
tion between men on one level which appears to be the
goal of what has passed as political progress.

These analogies are very helpful and suggestive in con-
sidering the state of religion, and particularly of religious
doctrine among us. The magnificent doctrinal system of the
Middle Ages has been undermined, partly by the growth of
physical science, which has ruined its supposed basis of known
facts as to the world and mankind, and partly by the growth
of historic criticism, which has rendered untenable its hold upon
the historic documents of Christianity.

Doctrine, being in the main practical or regulative, is
based like art and government rather on human feeling and
impulse than on mere knowledge. As naturalism destroys art
and democracy government, so the growth of science in its
two great branches has undermined Christian doctrine as it
existed for our forefathers. And there can be no more hope of
building a new fabric of religion directly on science than there
can be of building art directly on naturalism, or government
on equality. One. might as well hope to reconstruct a pro-
montory which has been undermined by the sea on the waves
which have eaten away its support.

But though doctrine cannot be evolved out of science, yet
we may feel sure that any future evolution of doctrine must be
able to live in the surroundings produced by science. As all
future art must be conditioned by closer knowledge of fact
and all future political organisation by the growth of equality,
so must doctrine accept science as a permanent controlling
condition. Future construction in religion must arise, as con-
struction in religion has arisen in the past, out of the ground

THE PRESENT STATE OF RELIGIOUS DOCTRINE g

of human necessity, and of divine revelation, which meets it.
But the process of building must be governed by the in-
tellectual conditions of the new age.

Our final court of appeal must be fact: that is, the con-
stitution of human nature. Though it is useless to appeal to
Bcience for the principles of religion, for those practical idi
which are the impulses of the higher life, yet the pursuit of
science is necessary to the formulation of religious doctrine.
Inquiry must be made into facts of human nature and the
experience of life. If man be naturally inclined to religion
and incomplete without it, we have to look into our own hearts,
and there, if we can, to watch the rise and growth of the
feelings and hopes, the purposes and volitions, with which
religion has to do. These are facts which we may observe for
ourselves in our own lives, or contemplate in the community
in which we dwell, or study as they are written large in the
history of the Christian Chinch. Observation can never give
us religious principles ; but observation, when religious prin-
ciples already exist, can guide us in their formulation, in just
the same way as when an artist has within him the germs of
style, only a study of nature is needed to enable him to
embody that style in works of art which the world will learn
to admire. Thus a careful study of psychologic fact is an
indispensable preliminary to any attempt at reconstruction of
religious doctrine. Of all appeals, the appeal to experience is
the most legitimate, and in making it we have an advantage
over our ancestors, inasmuch as our methods are sounder, our
perceptions more accurate, and our field of observation wider.
The Natural History of Religion, a study of very modern origin,
seems to me destined to condition theology in the future far
more than in the past, and to take the place, at least in some
degree, of the other tests of religious doctrine which time has
to some extent invalidated.

Every one in these days is aware that a certain amount of
physical exercise and recreation is necessary to a healthy life.
Such exercise is best taken in some sport or amusement which
is in itself agreeable and directed to some outward end. But
suppose that a man grows tired of these sports, becomes
indolent and lethargic. It then becomes the business of a

EXPLORATIO EVANGELIC A

wise physician to point out to him the physical needs which
exercise meets. In the same way, so long as any one lives in
the healthy life of religion it is well. But when doubt comes
to sap the spontaneity of religious activity, then an appeal to
the root principles of human nature and the necessities of
conduct becomes a necessity.

In all branches of science it is supremely necessary to
distinguish between fact and theory. Facts have to be
ascertained, in order that on them theories may be constructed.
But theories are continually changing ; and new views which
suit the facts better than the old ones are at once accepted.
Theories have a vogue and pass away, and no wise man will
accept them save as the best explanation of fact at the moment
available. But a fact once really established remains as a
basis for new theories for all time.

The misfortune in matters of religion is that fact and
theory have not been sufficiently distinguished. Theory has
constantly tried to pass itself off as fact, and been so inter-
twined with fact, that it has been almost impossible to attack
the theory without denying the allied fact. Successive genera-
tions have maintained the acceptance of certain metaphysical
constructions to be necessary to that satisfaction of the religious
needs which constitutes salvation.

For those who are content with the doctrinal construction
in which they live this book is not written. It is written for
those who regard dogmatic religion in our days as in an unsafe
condition. I have endeavoured to survey the walls of the
doctrinal edifice of religion, and to trace the lines of their
foundation. No doubt it will be found that great part of
these walls is sound and strong ; but until a complete survey
has been made, it will not be easy to distinguish the sound
from the unsound.

Of course the criticism lies on the surface that the facts of
human nature will be variously read in the various schools of
psychology and theology. This is true enough. And if I had
asserted that the study of 1 1 1 « * natural history of religion would
give us once for all an infallible theology, I should have
maintained an absurdity. Human nature differs by race and
by temperament ; and Buch differences must always be reflected

THE PRESENT STATE OF RELIGIOUS DOCTRINE n

in theology, but there may still be agreement within certain
limits. Nor are we obliged to rely only on the observations of
religious fact made by modern investigators. If this were the
ease, the sceptic might easily reject our facts as fancies and our
observations as dreams. But there lies an appeal to religious
history in the past. It is certain that for many hundreds of
years our ancestors have been convinced by experience of the
solidity of the facts which lie at the basis of religion. Had
it been otherwise, religion would have been eliminated by
competition. It has survived because it is the fittest, and it
has been the fittest because it has conformed to truth as to
the nature of God and man.

The general nature of the change which is gradually
• Mining to pass, or sooner or later must take place in our
religion, is well summed up by a writer of vivid insight,
Amiel, in a single phrase,1 " le displacement du christianisme
de la region historique dans la region psychologique est le voeu
de notre epoque." There is a process connected in Germany
with the name of Professor Harnack, in France with the school
of which M. Sabatier and the Kevilles are conspicuous members.
It is going on, though in less orderly and systematic fashion,
among ourselves. History, we are learning, is a branch of
science, and faith is based less on history than on experience.
The process will take a long time to complete ; but its
progress, though slow, is very sure. It must prevail,
just as the kindred process which has emancipated physical
science from theological preconceptions has prevailed, and
it may happen that in neither process will religion suffer real
injury. The winter of modern criticism strips the leaves
from the fair tree of Christian doctrine, but it does not kill the
tree itself; and before long we may perhaps see a new growth
of leaves covering that tree brightly again.

It is a commonplace with the historians of religion that
the ground originally was prepared for the seeds of Christianity
by the spread over all the world of Hellenic or Hellenistic
culture, by which a certain uniformity was produced in the
minds at least of all educated men. All accepted the principles
of Creek philosophy, and thought very much in one manner.
1 Journal Intime, ii. -13.

12 EX PLO RATIO EVANGELIC A

Thus a universal religion became possible. A similar process,
but working in a far more profound and radical fashion, is
taking place in our own days. The spread of physical and
historic science has brought the minds not only of Europeans
and Americans, but of Indians and Japanese, on to a new level.
Once more a vast field is being smoothed out in which a
common religion may strike its roots. And this field can only
be occupied by the religion of Christ. But the religion of the
Christian churches has to be greatly changed before it is suited
for starting on a new and a brilliant career. The same kind
of change must come over it which came over the religion of
the first Christian thinkers, when they came forth into the in-
tellectual world of the time, and had to make terms with Greek
culture. Nothing more clearly proved the vitality of the early
Church than the readiness with which it adapted itself to new
intellectual conditions. If the same principle of life still
exists in the religion of Christ, it will conquer the world
of modern civilisation, as it conquered the world of Greek
and Roman culture : but we are only beginning to see the
enormous changes which must in the process come over its
intellectual expression, and particularly over the received
Christian history and doctrine. If anything can help us to
forecast those changes, it will be a bird's-eye view of the
facts of the origin of Christianity, taken rather from the point
of view of a historian than from that of a theologian. This task
is attempted with however imperfect success in the present
worlc. As a preliminary, however, we must for a few chapters
turn our attention to the psychology of religious doctrine.

CHAPTEE II

THE INSPIRATION OF CONDUCT

For generations the enemies of religion have been in the habit
of representing it as a thing outworn, as adapted to the life and
the mind of man at a certain stage of his development, but now
become an anachronism, destined to follow sacrifices and
witchcraft into the lumber-room of history. It is hard to
imagine how these theorists can account for the persistent life
which, as a matter of fact, religion shows, and its inveterate
habit of continually renewing its energy and vitality after
periods of sloth and decline. For they cannot accept the only
view which satisfactorily accounts for these periodical revivals
and this persistent vitality : the view that religion is based
upon experience, and renews its life by the constant contact
witli fact.

If any value attaches to testimony, religious experience is
as real a thing as experience in any other field. Of course
men are very apt, in religion, as in other matters, to draw false
inferences from their experience ; wherever the feeble reasoning
powers of men come in, there is abundant risk of error.
Bnt those who reject the experience as chimerical because
they do not like the conclusions usually drawn from that
experience, act in an unscientific fashion.

The materialist schools have often been guilty of such
hasty and unsound procedure. Twenty years ago the authori-
ties of the medical schools of France denied the existence of
such a thing as hypnotism. Probably no one now disputes
the reality of the phenomena included under that term, though

i4 EXPLORATIO EVANGELICA

of course there may be the widest differences of opinion as to
what is implied in the phenomena. I would not, of course,
save for purposes of illustration, compare the facts of the
religious life, the noblest field of human experience, with the
morbid phenomena of hypnotism. But if even these latter
deserve, as facts, some degree of attention, how utterly
unreasonable are the theorists who would exclude from their
system of the universe facts which, in this country at least,
make up a very large part of the history of human life.

Our psychology has greatly suffered, like other branches of
knowledge, from setting aside phenomena which are not easily
investigated, and which impede one's theories. In fact, there
are whole realms of psychical phenomena, which, until lately,
were disregarded, and which are now more often visited by the
charlatan than the scientific inquirer. Of all that lies below
consciousness, and is the ground of it, we know even now very
little. Consciousness is like the surface of the sea, where
alone are the ways of commerce, while the vast and silent
depths below are scarcely visited by man. Yet the substance
which is at one moment at the surface of the sea, may
presently be far below that surface. There are all sorts of
sympathies, and of mysterious lines of connection between
spirit and spirit which we have but begun to track out. And there
is a possible and an actual communion between man and the
higher powers, which is so little understood, that the best
truth in regard to it must be sought, not in the books
of science, but in the works of religion and of poetry.
Spiritual facts exist all around and above us ; but the know-
ledge of them is not yet at what Comte called the positive
stage ; it is still theologic and metaphysic, and may long remain
so. One might be tempted even to wish that no attempt
should be made to map out this region more definitely, but for
the strongly marked tendency of modern science to set aside
all that cannot be observed and verified : ;i tendency which
compels those who value the deeper aspects of life to try,
however reluctantly, to put them on some sort of terms with
the more obvious aspects.

The experiences of religion as we find them in the civilised
world are of cultivated stock, and we should try in vain to find

THE INSPIRATION OF CONDUi l 15

more than the rudiments of them among savages and barbarians.
They are uot, however, for that reason less real and trustworthy.
A cultivated rose belongs to nature as much as a wild rose
and a horse as much as a hipparion. Unless we suppose- that

savagery is the only state natural to man, and all civilisation a
declension from that state, we are bound to regard the faculties
and feelings of civilised man as based on nature.

In the present chapter I propose to proceed psychologically
rather than through history or anthropology. It would be
possible to trace back the facts of which I have to speak to
earlier tonus among the more backward races of mankind, or
among the children of the civilised. But a consideration of
religion as a factor of human history is reserved for future
chapters. At present we are considering its working as it
may be witnessed in modern days on all sides of us. In
the present work religion is regarded as inextricably bound up
w ith ethics. The non-ethical elements which belong to very
early religion have a tendency to disappear with time, and are
not important for our present purpose. At present we shall
investigate the consciousness of developed man, and leave to
other occasions the inquiry how man became what he is.

Every action of man has an outer and an inner side, the
side which shows in the world of sense, and the side which
belongs to consciousness. To the outer world man belongs as
a body occupying space, and as a centre of force. To the
inner world he belongs as an ethical being, who has power
to act in this way or that, and who, by the action, forms
character.

This contrast is familiar enough to all who reflect. We
may illustrate it by taking a simple event, say a shipwreck.
Taking this in its outer aspect, an observer will say that the
violent action of wind, and wave, and rock on the framework
of a ship entirely accounts for the destruction of the vessel,
and of those within it. The physicist, speaking as such, will
say that the event is intelligible and could not under the
circumstances be otherwise. The physicist who is determined
to explain everything on physical methods will say that he
sees in the occurrence nothing but blind forces which care
nothing for human life and suffering. But a reasonable man

1 6 EXPLORATIO EVANGELIC A

will distinguish. He will allow that the physical and outward
aspect of the event is simple ; but he will not fail to observe
that in the history of every person on board, the shipwreck is
not merely an outward event, but a moral crisis leading to good
or evil, to happiness or misery, to the raising or degradation of
the life of each person there. This new and added side to the
event has nothing in it contrary to the laws of nature, for it
takes place in a region above and outside of those unvarying
laws which we suppose to hold in the physical universe.

I have taken an instance in which an event looked at
from outside seems a result of rigid law, but looked at from
inside bears the look of purpose and meaning. We may also
take a case which is almost the reverse of this, of an event
which, looked at outwardly, seems fortuitous, but from within
seems rigidly determined by law. Indeed most conduct has
this character. Even where our most intimate friends are
concerned we cannot tell from outside with accuracy what line
they will take in a difficult case where two duties seem to
conflict, and one must be given up for the other. To observa-
tion, the future action of A or B is often as doubtful as
anything can be in the world, and we are inclined to say that
here, if anywhere, uncertainty is supreme and any unvarying
law invisible. But A or B, looking at the same matter from
within, may feel with conviction, not indeed that only one
course is physically possible, but that only one is to him
morally possible ; that to act otherwise would be self-destruc-
tion, and that even to hesitate is unhealthy and wrong. The
inward law is of quite a different character from outward law,
but it is equally above caprice. It is moral, not physical, yet
none the less woven into the constitution of the world.

When a man has become accustomed to the contemplation
of this inner life, he soon recognises its fundamental facts. In
the outer world of sense and of action, the contrast lies
between two elements: on the one side the perceiving, actio-.
living self, <»n the other the facts of the visible world. Life
in the world consists in a constant adjustment of these two
elements. We gain our ends, or they are frustrated; we learn
facts as to the nature of surrounding objects and build those
into an orderly world of phenomena.

THE INSPIRATION OF CONDUCT 17

In the inner world there is also a fundamental cont
that between the bouI and God, between our will and a higher

will, between what la and what ought to be. In consciousness
we Learn to realise the presence of a Power as much greater
than our soul as the forces of the material world are greatei
than the forces of our bodies. This Power has been spoken of
in many ways. In a loyal adhesion to this Power the spiritual
life consists. It is the study of our relations with this Powei
which makes up our religious knowledge.1

Setting aside naturalistic and pantheistic religions, all
those which are of ethical cast centre in the belief in a Higher
Power revealed in consciousness and acting on will, feeling,
and thought; on will in the first place, since religion is a
matter rather of conduct than either of feeling or speculation ;
yet loyalty of will to the higher impulse raises the range of
feeling, and even clears away mists from the eyes of the mind.
It is from the kind of relationship which they establish with
this Higher Power that the great religions take their tone.
Judaism, Islam, and Christianity alike are intensely conscious
of the relation of God to the heart, but to each, different sides
of the Deity are revealed. The most fundamental of all
truths in regard to the Higher Power is that it makes within
us for righteousness, and if we will but subordinate ourselves
leads us to goodness and to happiness.

In the daily life of ordinary people it does not seem that
there is a moral element in every action. AVe should be
disposed to regard those who bring conscience into all their
actions as suffering from hypertrophy of that organ ; and as
applied to ordinary men and women this diagnosis might be
justifiable, although the great moral heroes, those who perman-
ently raise the level of life, do look upon even actions in
themselves trivial as having ethical elements. But in the
lives of all men there come times when they clearly see the
lines of good and evil diverging before them, and know that
the next step will have momentous consequences upon the
whole future, that they must at once and irrevocably begin
either to climb or to sink, since every action leaves its mark

1 The psychological groundwork of religion is treated in greater detail in a
work published by me in 1887, called Faith and Conduct .Macinillan & Co.)

EX FLORA TIO EVAXGEL1CA

on the character. At such moments men know, however
they may try to sophisticate themselves, that it is life and
peace to choose the better and refuse the worse : duty
shines before them as an ideal revealed by a power above and
beyond themselves ; and though they may refuse the duty they
cannot do so without guilt and sin.

There are few men indeed who do not sometimes find in
their hearts what Butler calls the witness of conscience and
Kant calls the " categorical imperative," the clear voice of duty
bidding them avoid the worse and choose the better. And
this it does quite independently of our hopes and wishes. We
may most earnestly long to find that some course which we
wish to follow is in the line of duty, and yet never be able for
a moment to lose sight of the fact that it is not in that line.
We may strive to argue down the sense of duty, may ridicule
it, or try to lose it in the crush of active employment, but we
cannot root it out of the ground of the heart. When we least
think of it, it will suddenly rise before us in undiminished
force, until we feel that it has a reality, a permanent vitality,
far deeper than that of our feelings, a place in nature more
solid than that of the things revealed by sense.

Ethically evil presents itself in a negative light, as imper-
fection and failure, as a falling short of what one would gladly
have attained, bringing dissatisfaction and misery. In climb-
ing the hill of life men constantly slip back, and even if they
attain at last to what is better, yet they find moral progress at
best but slow, and constantly re-echo the saying of Horace,
" Video meliora proboque, Deteriora sequor," or that of Paul,
" The good that I would I do not : but the evil which I would
not, that I do."

Religion, however, regards sin not as something negative,
but as something positive. It regards ;i man in every deed of
his as either a loyal subject of God or as in revolt against
him. Sin is rebellion, the deliberate or passionate rejection
of the higher impulse, and the preference of the lower. It
does not spring from mere weakness of the will, but badness
in it; or if it spring from weakness, it is weakness which
mighl have been and should have been cured : the weakness
which, when indulged, leads men to utter perdition.

THE INSPIRATION OF CONDUCT 19

Moralists regard ill-doing as mainly to be regretted because
it tends to diminish happiness, the happiness of the doer and

of those affected by thu deed. Religion, going deeper, regards
it as vile in itself, as Bhowing a wrong condition of the heart,
as indicating a will out of harmony with its surroundings and

with the purposes of God. To the sinner it imputes not

imperfection but guilt, and it declares that whether he suffers
from wrongdoing or not, at all events he deserves to suffer.
He has risen in rebellion against his legitimate Ruler. He
has actually in some small matters thwarted the intention of
the Most High. The extent of that thwarting may be but so
small as to be comparable to the extent to which a single mote
in the air prevents the beams of the sun from warming and
illuminating the world. But however small the power of the
-inner, the nature of the sin is the same.

And it is the testimony of the great mass of Christians,
that they are conscious in the past course of their lives of
having over and over again declined the better course, turned
away from the path of good, and that as a consecpience their
life runs at a lower level than it might have reached. In
some cases it was the weaknesses and vices inherited from
ancestors which came upon them unawares, and carried them
away before they had energy to resist ; in other and worse
cases they yielded to temptation : wishing certain ends they
strove to reach them, whether by a higher or a lower
path, and so degraded character in the attainment of the
pleasurable.

Having this consciousness, not merely of imperfection, but
of sin, not only of not having reached the highest ideal, but of
standing at a lower level than he ought to have reached, man
searches for a remedy. And he soon finds that there is none
in himself. He makes resolves, and in a few days he breaks
them. He resolutely sets his face towards the right, and
there follows a glow of self-righteous satisfaction which
presently lauds him in a lower depth than ever. All his
endeavours are like attempts to climb a hill of sand or a slope
of smooth snow. Utterly dissatisfied with his habits, with his
conduct and himself, he is ready to sink into despair, or to
drown all reflection in business and anxiety.

EX PL OP A TIO E VA NGELICA

Such has been, since the days of St. Paul, the history of
all those who have directed their conduct to an ideal end. In
religious history, and the biographies of those who have done
great works for men, we have hundreds of accounts showing us
how usual is this course of experience. But the histories do
not stop there. They go on to show that light has arisen in
darkness, that amid the despair a revelation has come of a
power which can transform life by a new energy. The light
which shows man good and evil becomes also a power to help
him to avoid the evil and reach the good. Conduct is a field
in which divine inspiration works, and man is a being who is
adapted to receive divine inspiration as the lightning-rod is
capable of transmitting electricity. Man calls upon the
Higher Power, and he is strengthened and raised, and enabled
to do what he had failed to do in a thousand trials. The
deadening feeling of guilt and degradation passes away, and
the man walks upright, looking on heaven and earth with
changed eyes. He does not attain perfection, either at once
or by degrees, but he enters on an upward course, a course
marked by narrowness, mistakes, and relapses, but still not
utterly unworthy of a high vocation.

Phenomena such as these may well be studied in the
annals of such religious movements as the rise of Methodism,
or the operations of the Salvation Army. "Whether in these
extreme manifestations of religious fervour there may not be
something morbid I need not inquire. Morbid phenomena
are often at least as instructive to the scientific inquirer as
the phenomena of health. The thing to observe is that it is a
sense of sin, a consciousness of want of harmony between the
inner law and the outer life which overpowers strong men, and
makes them tremble like a leaf. And the penitents feel that
out of the despair produced by the sense of sin they have no
means of climbing. No effort of will or resolutions of amend-
ment avail. They must trust to a power outside them. They
do not recover peace and balance of mind through resolving
that in future they will obey the higher law, but by feeling
within themselves a new virtue and power. They wait for a
change of heart, a power working in the will, and when they
feel it they have a consciousness of being healed, of being put

THE INSPIRATION <>/■' CONDUCT

into healthier relation towards moral good, and enabled to
make their future life different from their past life.

The same phenomena which appear in extreme form in
religious ecstasy and revival appear in more usual and reason-
able shape in the ordinary phenomena of the religious life,
which are quite familiar to all to whom religion is a real
experience. And since there exists in the minds of nearly all
men of education and culture a prejudice against the vulgarity
and want of public decency which often mark the doings of
revivalist organisations, we turn to the close parallel to the
experiences which they reveal which is to be found in works
which have long been in constant use among Christians, such
works as the Confessions of Augustine, the Imitatio, and the
Pilgrim's Progress. These works all record the relations of
human souls to God, their perceptions of spiritual facts, and
the emotions, desires and volitions which arise out of those
facts. .They disclose to us an inner life of intense reality,
which moulds the outer and visible life ; they go to the roots
of our being, and show spiritual forces there operating. And
the vast and continued power of these great religious books
arises from the fact that their readers find reflected in them
their own feelings and their own experiences. Like all the
works of highest genius they reach that which is permanent
and fundamental in human nature. If they had dealt with
fancy rather than fact, if they had been of a sickly and
unnatural cast, they would long ago have been forgotten.
They live because they are full of the sap of humanity ; and
he to whom they do not appeal fails to appreciate some of the
best and deepest elements of the common life of mankind.

I am not, of course, maintaining the absurd position that
all, or that any of us bear in our breasts an instinctive and
infallible test of good and evil, so that we can never make
mistake between the one and the other. All our senses, even
those of the body, are liable to hallucination and error. The
art of the conjuror consists in making us suppose that we see
what we do not see. Our ears are still more easily imposed
upon. Yet eyes and ears correspond to the truth of nature,
and are sufficiently trustworthy to be safe guides in daily life.
The moral sense is less clear in its testimony and less certain

EX PL OR A TIO E VA NGELICA

in its action because it deals with what is more obscure, and
because intellectual error and weakness are perpetually
shadowing it. Yet it also corresponds to what is real : else it
would never have been developed and persisted. It also is a
measure of the truth of phenomena, though it requires an
education and training more severe than those necessary in
case of the bodily senses. Obtuseness of conscience may make
us misjudge the character of actions as shortness of sight may
make us misjudge the distances of objects. But we do not
blind the short-sighted, but give them spectacles. So a
defective conscience is not to be slighted but corrected.

Primarily the force which acts in conscience is related not
to intellect, but to action. It does not at once illuminate the
field of ethics, but it induces men to do what is with them
an acknowledged duty. It does not in the first instance
enlighten the eyes, but impels heart and will. And yet by
degrees it tends to teach more clearly the paths of good and
evil. Loyalty of heart to conscience has a steady, clearing
effect on the ideas of duty and goodness. Thus a person
whose will is bent on doing right may pursue very imperfect
ideals, but will only in a few abnormal cases become a
scourge to mankind.

The facts of conscience and religion in no way make
superfluous the arguments of ethics as to human good and
general happiness. They furnish morality with an impulse
and a sanction, but not as a rule with an ethical system,
though, of course, sometimes such a system may be inseparably
intertwined with the religious fervour itself. In origin and in
logic religion and ethics are quite separable, though in all the
religious schools the two elements are mingled in a multitude
of definite ways. And unless a religion has united itself with
a noble and stable form of ethics, it is brought to an end by
the friction of daily life. It is unsuited to its surroundings,
and perishes in the struggle for existence.

Wherever the life of religion exists, whether by gradual
growth from childhood, or by a change in middle lite, it is
nurtured by the Bacred customs of the Churches, more especi-
ally by the Christian Communion, and by that intercourse
with the Higher Tower which is called prayer. The

THE TNSPJRA TION ( >/■ C( WDl ri 7 23

natural history of prayer is little studied. People have
commonly regarded it as something too sacred to be
Btudiedj almost too sacred to be spoken of. Each man
guards the sacred 3ecret in his own bosom. And yel in a
time like ours, when everything which is not spoken about is
disregarded, and everything unapparent is overlooked, then;
may be reasons for Betting aside any excessive delicacy in the
matter. At present, it will be sufficient to refer the reader to
a remarkable passage which I have ([noted in a later chapter
from Dr. Dale's Living Christ. There may be an admixture
of mistaken theory in that work, but the facts which the
writer sets forth with remarkable clearness and force as to
the definite and unmistakable results which follow in the life
in consequence of prayer seem to me to be established by a
mass of evidence which is quite irresistible.

The experience of prayer brings out a remarkable practi-
cal paradox. It might naturally be supposed that despair
of one's own powers, and leaning upon a force which is not
ourselves, must weaken the will, or at least render the char-
acter colourless and poor. But precisely the opposite to this
takes place. The more men lean on the Higher Power, the
more their higher and better side is developed. Character,
instead of becoming soft and weak, becomes strong and
vigorous ; the will gains, as it were, a fresh life. The
soul of man seems to cast away its weakness and reach
the springs of a new life, when it returns to the ultimate
ground of its being. Working with divine aid is not yielding
to an irresistible force from without, but enlarging one's own
power, taking away the barriers which prevent a flood of
higher life from pouring through the heart. Man discovers
the truth of the divine paradox that by losing ourselves we
find them, and find them renewed and transformed by divine
energy.

Some people who are unable to deny the phenomena of
the religious life as phenomena, would yet deny their root in
the nature of things, would consider them as a mirage which
ceases to be when one ceases to look at it. To such objectors
Victor Hugo has made a vigorous reply. " II y a une philo-
sophic qui nie l'infini. II y aussi une philosophic qui nie le

24 EXPLORATIO EVANGELICA

soleil. Cette philosophic s'appelle cecite." This, however, is
an over-statement from the philosophical point of view. For
no blind person, presumably, denies the reality or the advan-
tage of seeing, if it were possible to him. But there are many
in our days, especially on the Continent, who glory in their
spiritual blindness, and regard it as the only healthy condition,
who believe religion to be the enemy of progress and the foe
of human happiness.

In fact it is necessary to allow that the faculty of spiritual
vision is not like the faculty of material vision present in
every apparently healthy person, but that it is absent, or
rather dormant, in the case of many men, and when it is pre-
sent, has very many degrees of acuteness and vigour in various
natures. Men differ the one from the other remarkably in
their power of realising the presence and working of the
Higher Power ; and the same men, at various times in their
lives, possess this power in a greater and a less degree. A better
parallel to spiritual susceptibility than that offered by ordinary
vision is to be found in the susceptibility to musical sounds.
The faculty of perceiving and of appreciating music belongs by
nature to men in various degrees, and can be cultivated into
great delicacy or neglected until it almost dies out. Some
persons can with difficulty distinguish one tune from another,
while to others some new and unexpected harmony of sounds
brings an intense delight.

Of course this comparison is only made for the sake of
illustration. Susceptibility to religious experience is as much
more important than power to appreciate music as conduct
and life are more important than artistic taste. But taking
this comparison as valid, and supposing that the sense of the
supernatural really resembles an artistic taste, it will yet be
saved from the charge of unreality. Every one would allow
that musical appreciation is based upon the permanent and
fundamental elements of human nature. No reasonable per-
son would deny its value because he was himself deficient in
it. It is, indeed, quite evident that the pleasure which in
■ ■acli succeeding generation music gives to mankind is quite
SUfficienl proof that man is a musical being, and that he who
has do ear or love for music is in that respect a lesser man

THE INSPIRA //< >.V OF CONDUCT 25

than he who has a musical ear. But our delighl in music is
its own reward, and brings with it to ordinary men emotions
indeed and pleasure, but no intellectual inferences, no views
of the universe, no scheme of life. Whereas, experience in
religion at once carries men on beyond itself, requires a share in
their thoughts, leads them to alter their ways of living, gives
them hop" beyond the grave. And it is taught by the highest
authorities in religious matters that all have at least in some
degree the 1'arulties exercised in religion, though they be often
either paralysed or perverted. A man without ideals and with-
out a conscience might be kept from obvious wickedness by fear
of punishment or the influence of friends, but he would be only
half human after all. And where conscience and ideals exist,
there, consciously or unconsciously, explicitly or implicitly,
must religion exist also.

Such appear tu me to be the primary facts of the religious
life ; the exact meaning and force of those facts will be con-
sidered in future chapters. Some critics may object that I
rely too exclusively upon Christian experience in setting forth
the facts of essential religion. My reply is that the phenomena
of religion are by far most fully and clearly displayed in the
history of Christianity. In the explanations which follow also
my line will be primarily Christian, because in my opinion the
great teachers of Christianity have far better understood the
psychology of religion than have any investigators who have
proceeded on other lines. I speak only of the practical teach-
ing of Christianity : the psychology of Christian doctrine is, as
we shall see later, of another kind.

CHAPTER III

THE PRACTICAL GROUNDS OF BELIEF

It is facts such as those briefly touched on in our second
chapter which make up the subject-matter of religion, and
which give to religion its permanent vitality. If they were
fancies rather than facts, no gorgeous ceremonial, no system
of a state church, no threats of future punishment, could keep
religion alive among us, still less could, from time to time,
revive the failing flame of religious enthusiasm. If the
answer to prayer were unreal, and the bestowal of divine help
a dream, all our churches would, ages ago, have fallen to pieces.
If the beliefs of the higher life were unfit to stand the test of
living, of pleasure and pain, and the competition with the
attractions of the world, they would fall into contempt, and
be regarded as mere lumber in the storehouse of history,
instead of attracting by a kind of natural fascination the
great majority of those who desire to do some good among men,
those possessed by an ambition which is not satiated by the
mere successes of the world.

And on these facts personal religion is based. People who
have in their own history verified their truth, build upon them
a fabric of belief which is altogether beyond the reach of
attack; attain a position whence they can look down in easy
indifference on all the intellectual difficulties with which our
age is so harassed and beset. If they are asked for a justifi-
cation of the faith that is in them, they commonly answer in
the language of the Gospel, " Whereas I was blind, now I see."

I'.ut although nothing can shake the position of those who

THE PRACTICAL GROUNDS OF BELIEF 27

are content in private to taste the fruits and live the Life of
religion, yet that position has, in reference to science and to
society, the weakness of being subjective only. Be who has
belief can repel the objector, but he cannot without further ado
refute him; certainly cannot conquer and win him. The
great problem of those who write on the theoretic or rational
aspect of religion is to turn this subjective certainty into objec-
tive assertion, to develop the inferences which may safely be
drawn from the facts of religious consciousness, and to place the
truths of faith on terms with the truths of science.

It is necessary to transmute the "I feel" and "I know "
of the religious man into statements with regard to God and
man which will bear investigation and repetition, which no wise
man need be ashamed to utter, and no man of science need be
obliged to place in a cell of knowledge separate from those in
which he holds the rest of his discoveries.

Experience and reasoning make up the fabric of our
ordinary knowledge. If we were merely passive beings and
had no active life, no will or character, we should rest in
them wholly. But the moment we begin to act, faith comes
in. Faith is the determination to rest in and to act upon
certain views which the mind has arrived at, whether by
experience or reasoning, whether wisely or unwisely. The
evidence on which faith acts may be various, and of very
various degrees of value. But that does not affect the char-
acter of faith, which may be strongest where it is least firmly
based. It is by faith that a man plunges headforemost into
water, trusting to rise up again to the surface. By experience
he knows the buoyancy of water, but to act on the knowledge
requires faith. It is by faith that we refuse to believe that
a friend has done a dishonourable action. The indications
that he has so acted may be strong, and our proofs of our
friend's character may in the scales of reason be lighter ; yet
we determine to stand by our own experience, and so the will
takes its own course; it has faith in the friend and will believe
nothing to his detriment, unless compelled.

Religious faith is of the same character. It also is con-
cerned with action and with present fact. On the ground of
inner experience, or it may be in reliance on the testimony of

28 EX PLO RATIO EVANGELICA

those whom we respect, we make up our minds to rest in and
to act upon certain views as to the existence and the nature
of God, as to our own souls and their destiny, as to the pur-
poses underlying the world and the course of history. And
religious faith may be either justified or perverted, be either a
true or a false guide in life. Thus it is of the utmost
consequence that our religious faith should correspond to the
facts of our environment : otherwise we are sure to go astray.
Therefore we must proceed with the greatest caution in our
endeavour to reach in religious matters such certainty as may
be a legitimate basis of faith. But it by no means follows
that we shall or can reach religious truth which is from the
speculative point of view entirely unassailable. We must
learn and observe that we may act, not merely that we may
know. And if our action leads to success and happiness, this
is a prima facie indication that the knowledge on which it was
based had important elements of truth in it.

In this matter religious knowledge proceeds on exactly
the same lines as knowledge of the material world and of the
human beings about us. Sensation gives us the materials for
a knowledge of the world, but it does not give us that knowledge
directly. If we were not interested in the world, and had not
to live our life in it, sensations would come to us like the
pictures of a kaleidoscope, fair shapes without any meaning.
But necessities of action, purpose, will, and faith, build up out
of the impressions of sensation a material world of which our-
selves are part. Our senses bring us only the bricks of which
we build the temple of knowledge, and we add from our inner
selves not merely the cement which binds the bricks together,
but the purpose and design according to which the edifice
takes its form. The whole feeling of objectivity, as applied to
the material world, arises from purposes carried out or frus-
trated, pleasure and pain, hope and fear. And we may
see this still more clearly if we consider not merely the
physical world, but that pari of it which consists of human
beings like ourselves.

If we puss by all the physical difficulties which hang

around any possible perception ofaa objective world about us,
and allow that our senses are sources of real and trustworthy

THE PRACTICAL GROUNDS OF BELIEF 29

information as to the material world, yel even then it is cleai
that they cannot immediately inform us that human beings
conscious like ourselves surround us. They can Bhow us thai
we dwell amid a number of bodies formed like our own,
constantly occupied with this or that, forwarding or thwarting
our plans, and daily conversing with us. But they cannot by
any possibility prove that these bodies are more than uncon-
scious automata. The only will and thoughl of which we can
possibly be immediately aware are our own ; if we believe that
our friends also arc- conscious, have will and thought of their
own, this must be an addition which we make to the facts of
sense. If there ever lived a man who supposed himself to be
the only conscious being in existence, he could probably never
be confuted. But all sane human beings have come to the
belief that those about them are willing and conscious creatures.
And mainly, 1 think, on two grounds. First, there is the
ground of analogy and inference. We see in others actions
and expressions which we know in our own case to accompany
certain feelings and thoughts and volitions; we therefore
naturally assume that similar effects have similar causes, and
that what is in our own case the result of purpose, must be the
result of purpose, and so of consciousness, in others. But the
presumption arising from mere inference would be but a feeble
and languid thing, were it not reinforced by the active faculties
of the mind, by the personal will. We rind that the people
with whom we have to do have different purposes from ours,
thwart our desires, and rob us of expected pleasure. They do
not do what we expected of them, nor what we wished them
to do. Such experiences as these impress upon us with con-
stantly recurring emphasis the independence and objectivity of
other selves.

And more than this. The intensity with which we realise
the existence of other selves, the completeness of our convic-
tion that they are as real as we are, depends upon and arises
out of social feelings, feelings of compassion and admiration, of
love and hatred.

The strongest love, when it rises above the personal needs
on which it was based, feels the most intensely that those who
are its objects are conscious, moral, responsible, having a past

EX PLO RATIO EVANGELICA

history and future possibilities. Looking from within we shall
see that a very small contribution to any of our social feelings
and energies is given by mere perceptions, and a far larger
contribution by the instincts which objectify a world about us
full of spirits, like ourselves, clad in flesh, and moving on the
stage of the world. And it is a necessary part of our belief
that if we passed away, these other human beings would re-
main to live and to feel quite apart from our experience of
them.

In the case of religious perception and belief we move in
the same lines. Here also the influence of a sort of moral
inspiration, a spiritual director of our lives, if made at all by
the intellect, remains vague and feeble apart from practical
life. In this case we begin not with physical perception, but
with mental experience, which is equally trustworthy and
equally clear. It reveals to us a Being above our wisdom
and our thought, who answers prayer in ways which we had
not foreseen, who guides our lives with a foresight far beyond
our own, and who enables us to do that for which our own
strength was utterly insufficient. If it is illegitimate to infer
from these facts the objective existence of a Deity, then it is
illegitimate to infer from the perceptions of sense the objective
existence of father or mother, wife or child.

But here also all the force and value of the belief which
we reach is derived from the will. By languidly thinking it
probable that there is a Deity men make no advance in the
path of life and conduct. It is necessary to realise that he is
with the full intensity of passion and will ; to hold communion
with him, to be guided by him, in subordinate our wills to his.
And the more we do so, the more the spiritual life penetrates
the web of our mundane existence.

And in this case also feeling and instinct, religious feeling
and instinct as opposed to social, play about the mere facts of

lerience, and day by day make those who are trying to live

the spiritual Life more convinced of the existence and the

ii' of God, and more full of reverence and love for him.

To what height these feelings may rise we may learn from the

if religious books of the world, from Augustine and Calvin,
from Tauler and A Kempis. Theyare no isolated phenomena,

THE PRACTICAL GROUNDS OF BELIEF 31

but parallel b> the rest of our moral and mental activities.
Sensation is but the suggestion of life: will, emotion, passion,
these are life itself. And spiritual and social life are built on
the basis of sensation by similar faculties and in similar
fashion.

It is thus clear that in all provinces of knowledge,
whether it be knowledge of the world around us, or of human
beings, or of God himself, objectivity is introduced not by
intellect, but by will. Observation can never overstep the
adamantine limits of brain and nerve whereby it is enclosed.
We can have no perception of things save as they are repro-
duced to us and in us. And intellect can but combine the
data of sense, can but compare and contrast, but cannot add
to the original impressions. If there were a being who lived
«mlv the life of sense and intellect, who had no wants, no
fears, and no hopes, to him the very notion of objectivity would
be entirely void and meaningless, a perfect blank. It is desire,
passion, sympathy which lead us to give objectivity, first to
the material world, then to the world of other selves, and then
to the Ruler of the spiritual world. And in the case of all
three worlds the road to objectivity is one and the same.

Objectivity being thus given by will rather than by
intellect attaches in far the highest degree to character.
Character is the personality built up within by successive acts
of volition. It is character which we recognise as the inmost
kernel of the being of all about us. When we study the
world and history it seems that the inner purpose of all of it
is the provision of a moral discipline whereby character is
formed and sustained. Hence our mere material surroundings
seem like a fleeting and momentary show, compared to the
solidity and importance of character. If anything be worth
doing in the world it is the formation of character. If any-
thing be objective in the world it is formed character.

The founder of modern philosophy, Descartes, built his system
of knowledge on the proposition cogito ergo sum. But philosophy
has since found out that in the ergo dwells no real force of
inference, and that the proposition does not really widen our
knowledge. A safer basis both for thought and life will be
found in the statement cob ado ct amando jw. Hence springs

32 EX PLO RATIO EVANGELIC A

the sense of a personality in one's self, and the conviction of the
existence of other personalities. This is the bridge which leads
us from the mere phenomena to that which is real and eternal.
It is love, feeling, and passion which give rise to every man
as a phenomenon of the world of sense ; and it is the same
energies of the soul which give man a" personality and a place
in the transcendental world.

Such is the justification of the religion of conduct. as
opposed to that of speculation. If this basis be unsound all
the present work is a house built on the sand. It is therefore
necessary to consider, in some detail, the main objections which
will be brought against it. But, as a preliminary, let us see
to what kind of assertion it will lead us as to the nature of
God. How is doctrine to be founded ou this basis ?

CHAPTEB IV

EXPERIENCE AND DOGTRINE

We thus come in sight of a method of procedure. Our
argument has practical rather than theoretic grounds. Most
of what we know or can know directly of our own higher nature
or of God is furnished to us not by sense, and not by intellect
working up the data of sense, but by man's conscience and
faculties of action. Let us apply the method in the case of
some of those attributes which seem the most essential to the
divine nature, and first in the case of the divine goodness.
No one can by searching find out God to perfection; but it
may be possible to place certain elementary facts in regard to
his being in a clear light.

If we attempt from the order visible in the material
world to argue that the author of that world is good, we
pursue a course which cannot be called altogether illegitimate,
and yet which will be found in the result very unsatisfactory.
For in the first place we are not competent to judge of the
scheme of nature as a whole : it is too vast for our poor
faculties. And in the second place, it has seemed to many
wise men that the arrangements of the material universe do not
bear the impress of consummate goodness. A modern poet
exaggerates this feeling when he speaks of nature as " red in
tooth and claw with ravin," and as "shrieking against our
creed " ; and though this statement is one-sided and exagger-
ated to the verge of unreality, it is not baseless. Hence in
ancient days many philosophers held the world to be the
work not of a perfect creator, but of an imperfect demiurge.

3

34 EXPLORATIO EVANGELIC A

Such views are now out of date. We have been steadily
growing in the knowledge of nature ; and recent writers, in
particular the author of Natural Relit/ion, have shown how the
study of nature may lead to a lofty theism. But the theism
which is thus founded is exceedingly hard and cold unless
warmed and made moral and living by elements borrowed from
the religion of conduct. It is the greatness rather than the
goodness of God which impresses the man of science.

On the other hand the religious emotions which give
colour to the spiritual life, though in the highest degree a
source of happiness and a cause of exaltation, are in character
not sufficiently definite to form a basis of any intellectual
construction.

But when, on the other hand, we start from the direct facts
of human consciousness, it is no longer a matter of reasoning
and of doubtfulness to prove that God is good. For the power
which speaks in conscience is, if we may hazard a bold phrase,
good first and divine afterwards. Goodness, the perception of
what is good, and the desire of what is good, are the differentia
of that power, the primary fact whereby it is revealed.

The very facts of conduct, in their essential nature, lead
us directly to certain views in regard to God, the truth of
which can scarcely be matter of dispute, unless the facts them-
selves be denied. These facts reveal to us that God is on the
side of virtue, of right-doing. And this seems to be at all
events the most essential part of what we mean when we say
that God is good. If, however, we start from some theological
thesis, such as that God is the sum of all perfections, and so
must be infinitely good, we lose ourselves in a cloud of wordy
abstractions, which may have a meaning, or may have none.
If we Bay thai God as he exists in his eternal essence, and

without any regard to the human race, is infinitely g I, we

use winds which, strictly speaking, have no meaning whatever,
for all our knowledge and all our wisdom is limited by the
bounds of experience, and when we Speak of what is unrelated

to our experience we apeak of what is for us non-existent.

The word good is doubtless somewhat vague. What it means
in this connection is that God is on the side of human pro-

- towards ideal molality. In one age one virtue is most

EXPERIENCE AND DOCTRINE 35

necessary to such progress, in another age a different virtue.
And this very fact must warn us against applying to God the

term good in too objective a sense. We should be shocked if
there were predicated of the Divine Being some qualities which,
in the case of the savage, may be of very high value for the
preservation of the race. " Plato congratulates the Athenians
on having shown in their relations to Persia, beyond all the
other Greeks, a pure and heart-felt hatred of the foreign
nature." l At that time hatred of the foreign nature was in
the tribal morality of the Greeks a virtue, but none of us
would like to say that God hated the Persian and the
Carthaginian. The same thing holds in our own day. There
can be no high or manly virtue without a certain amount of
courage, and if we look into the world, we see that God is on
the side of courage ; yet to ascribe to God, as creator of the
universe and source of life, the attribute of courage, would
be at once seen to be uumeaning. And the same reasoning
applies to other virtues. Chastity is a high human virtue, but
it obviously implies a body and domestic relations. We know
that God wishes us to be chaste, but irreverence would scarcely
reach the length of speaking of the Father in Heaven as
chaste. And so on in other cases. Virtue in us consists
of the repulse of temptation ; where there is no temptation
there can be no human virtue. Morality is relative to
man's surroundings ; alter the surroundings and it becomes
changed. It is a revelation of the divine, but does not com-
prehend the divine. It is only in the human and relative
sense that we can dare to speak of God as good. But the
facts of conduct at once imply that God is on the side of
goodness, and intends us so to act.

In the very facts of conduct there are involved also truths
in regard to our own nature, as well as in regard to the divine
character. We learn in them that we are moral and spiritual
beings, capable of better and of worse, and responsible for
choosing the better or the worse. We feel that if our will
sets itself on the side of what is good, we rise in the scale of
the universe ; but if our will chooses what is evil, we fall at
once to a lower level than that of which wre are capable. So
1 Plato, M nesa nus, p. 24f>. Quoted in Eccc Homo, ch. xiv.

36 EXPLORATIO EVANGEL1CA

we find that we have wills of which morality is a necessary
condition.

These, then, are the primary facts of natural religion,
the basis on which all further developments of religion are
founded. It may be said that even so much is not natural to
man as man, that savages in this or that part of the world
seem to have no moral sense, are superstitious without religion,
and punctilious without ethics. The germs of conduct exist
everywhere ; it may, however, be developed, not at the initial
stage of human progress, but at a later time. It is none the
less human. Modern studies of development have done away
with the notion that man is endued with a set of inalienable
characteristics which may be found alike in the savage and in
the philosopher. As he rises from savagery, man attains new
powers and fresh characteristics, which are none the less
human and real because historically they arise by slow degrees
and not all at once. Infants, like savages, are destitute of
the powers involved in conduct, and so of the knowledge
which rises out of it. But as infants become men and women.
the world of conduct is slowly revealed within them. And then
they come to the facts about God and man which make the
basis of religion.

Of course it is not in conduct alone, in that which is
ethically good and bad, that the divine impulse and inspiration
of life are to be traced. In the impulse which leads men to
prolonged investigations in matters of science, in the urging
which leads to the production of great and memorable works
of art, we may also find the working of a higher power.
"Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above." But
if we began to speak of science and of art, of all the impulses
which lead to the development and the raising of life, our task
would become an impossible ona So while fully recognising
that I am taking up some aspects of religion and neglecting
others, 1 have chosen in the present work to speak almost
exclusively of conduct, ami of doctrine in relation t<» conduct,
Tin- principles and the phenomena which we observe in tins
part of tin- field of observation may be traced in different
developments and amid othei circumstances in tie' rest of it.

If we bear in mind the fart that we are speaking, not of

EXPERIENi 7-; AND />< H TRINE 37

the consciousness of savages ot barbarians, but <>f that <>f the
adult European races, we may further develop the doctrinal
contents of religion.

The chief source of our knowledge of the Divine Nature
is that communion with the Higher PoweT which is called
prayer. In regard to prayer, there are a number of specula-
tive difficulties. Many people in our days have persuaded
themselves that the effects of prayer are only subjective; that
prayer does not move the will of God, but only brings our
wills into a more healthy state. It is quite unprofitable to
discuss from the a priori point of view the relations between
the human and the divine will. If we begin by making assump-
tions as to what the Divine Nature must be, instead of
inquiring how it is revealed to us, we enter on a fruitless
task. It seems to me sufficient to point to the enormous
consensus of testimony from wise and simple, learned and
ignorant, sceptical and credulous, which affirms as a matter of
personal knowledge that prayer does bring answers which
change not only the will of him who prays, but his character,
his circumstances, and the ways of others.

If we are prepared to accept our experience of what does
take place, rather than our fancies of what ought to take place,
we must allow that prayer is often answered. And in the
answer to prayer there is a feature of the greatest importance,
the element, so to speak, of arbitrariness. Those who have
had answer to prayer cannot be sure that they could again
secure similar answer by similar prayer. On another occasion
the answer may be entirely different. He who prays for
liberation from disease may in one case be raised up, and in
another, I will not say left to die, but prepared for death.
He who prays for reformation of character may fall into the
slough of evil ways again and again before his final rescue.

Those who repudiate divine intervention in the world have
various ways of their own for accounting for these phenomena,
which they can scarcely entirely neglect or deny. Yet it is
hard to see how any explanation of theirs can meet this
particular feature of apparent arbitrariness, which is yet
essential to the matter. In the universe generally like causes
are followed by like effects. But in this case like causes are

38 EXPLORATIO EVANGELICA

followed by effects to all appearance entirely diverse. They
can be regarded as alike in a sense, as all proceeding from
divine goodness and compassion exerted in various ways, but
they cannot be regarded as alike in any naturalist sense.

And as there is a complete contrast between the phenomena
of prayer and the events of the material world, so there is an
absolute similarity between them and the phenomena of human
society. Our requests made to friends, likewise, bring no
necessary answer ; sometimes they are granted, and sometimes
refused ; sometimes they meet with one response, and some-
times with another. It is precisely this incalculable element,
this entire independence of our will and of the whole of our
subjectivity in the actions and reactions of our friends, which
gives us a vivid sense of their character and personality. It
is not easy to see why the same argument should not apply to
God also, and why his treatment of prayer should not be
considered as a full justification of our attributing to him also
personality.

Nor do the facts of grace and of prayer by any means stop
at the attribution of personality to God. Men have found by
experience that in the answer to prayer that which often seems
arbitrary covers another element, not one of rigid law or
invariable sequence, but one of kindness and mercy. When
men look at their lives as they lie in perspective behind them,
they often discern the guidance of a wiser thought and a
higher purpose than their own. The belief in an individual
Providence is universal among those who are spiritually
minded, and often forces itself on those whose religion is
unformed and inarticulate. We have it on Hamlet's authority
that " There's a Divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew
them how we will." And almost all great men of action
of whom history speaks have believed their deeds to be under
the controlling power of a higher purpose. Religion builds
upon this natural and universal sentiment a loftier doctrine.
NTone CaD always feel an absolute trust in the purposes of God ;

all of us are Bometiniea in a state of revolt, open or un-
expressed, against those purposes. Yet it appears that those
who earnestly try to lead the divine life commonly grow with
the years more reconciled to the band of an overruling Pro-

EXPERIENCE AND DOCTRINE yj

vidence, and less disposed to set up their owe will against it.
Therefore, we may fairly say that the attribution of the highest
wisdom ami power to I rod is dictated by the widest and deepest
spiritual experience. We say that he who thus plans and
directs, who averts evil and bestows good, must be not only
kind and loving, but a kind and loving Person.

Such is the natural exclamation of piety; and if it be
merely intended as the expression of experience in the nearest
terms of our rough human language, it will be well. We
cannot dissociate love and care from personality, and in fact
an intense feeling of the personality of friend and relative is
quite inseparable from love to them or clear realisation of their
love for us. Bnt when in a mood of philosophic analysis we
approach the attribution of personality to God, we at once see
that it cannot be regarded as logically defensible. Personality,
as we know it, consists of a single stream of thought and
volition. Cases have been heard of in recent years in which
strauge diseases have made men live two disconnected lives at
different times, and we have called these cases of double
personality. There is scarcely any word of so difficult inter-
pretation, from the psychological point of view, as the word
person. But that he wdio made and sustains all things, and
knows the hearts of all men, can be personal in any sense in
the least intelligible to us is impossible. And in fact there
is in the communication of God with man a remarkable
feature, in that the communication seems to shut out all the
rest of mankind, that we have to do, as Cardinal Newman
says, soli'.s cum solo. It is this feature in God's dealing with
man which has especially led the religious in many ages to
interpose between themselves and the Divine Being all sorts
of intermediaries, angels and saints, who might more reasonably
be supposed to devote attention and care to men one at a
time. They have masked the impersonal God by a multitude
of inferior personalities in dependence upon him. This also
is a way of throwing the facts into intellectual form ; but
whatever form of speech or turn of thought be adopted, the
facts remain as before.

It may be said that to other human beings we can only
attribute personality by inference from their observed actions,

40 EXP LOR A TIO E V ANGELIC A

and that thus we have as good a right to affirm personality of
God as of any other human self, save the one self of which we
have immediate consciousness. It is hard to see how this
argument can be met within the bounds of strict logic. But
all that it can really prove is that there is in God, as revealed
in conduct, something of a like nature to human personality.
This seems to show that God, as known by man, includes
personality rather than that God is limited by personality.
If we compare personality to that which, in the things of
experience, it most resembles, a line, length without breadth,
then we may say that personality is included in the Divine
Nature as a given line is included in infinite space, or rather
as it would be included in space, not of three dimensions, but
of a million dimensions.

And again, it is an essential element in our notion of
personality that it should be exclusive. Our personalities are
shut off by hard liues from those of our friends, even the most
intimate. And the more we respect our friends the more
objective and exclusive do their personalities appear. With
the divine influence in life it is otherwise. It acts not from
without us, but from within us, not by opposing our wills, but
by strengthening our best selves. Thus the Jewish prophets
spoke not in their own name, but in that of Jehovah, while
they yet expressed their own best thought. Thus St. Paul said
that he no longer lived, but Christ lived in him ; yet we find
in St. Paul's writings not only the expression of high thought,
but the display of a strongly marked personality. The notion
that the Spirit of God speaks through men as through mere
instruments is an utterly false notion. God inspires person-
ality, rather than is revealed as personality. " In him we live
and move and have our being."

Thus in a case where reason strictly followed lands us in
:m insoluble antinomy, the heart and conscience may have free
course. AYhile the personality of God must always to reflec-
tion present insoluble difficulties, the heart may, as the history
of thousands of Christians has proved, love and adore, may
enter into intimate relations with the source of life and being.
Whatever speculation may say, to Christian belief as well as to
action God is personal, and takes a personal and loving interest

EXPERIENCE AND DOCTRINE 4'

in the lives of all those of his creatures who do aot revolt
against his guidance.

The existence in the world of evil and sin, the fact that
we are constantly tempted to do what we know to be wrong,
has from the first cast its dark Bhadow, not only over practical
lit'.', but over religious faith. In our days an easy-going
optimism is apt to make light of this shadow, but it is still
there. The sunshine of material prosperity has for a moment
made it less strongly marked to the eyes of the well-to-do
classes. But those who dwell and labour among the poor still
see its darkness; and in the days which before long are likely
to come upon the world, it will stand out as clear as ever.
Ill-- existence of this darker and sterner side of religion must
never be forgotten; and it must modify not only our hopes
and our activities, but also our beliefs.

There can be no doubt as to the impression which the
facts of temptation and of sin have produced on the minds of
the great Christian leaders and saints of past ages. As the
inspiration for good comes from God, so the inspiration for
evil, they have held, comes from the arch-enemy of God and
man, the Devil. At many periods of history it might seem
that Christian belief and imagination have been more taken up
with the Devil than with God. The Founder of Christianity
appears to have continually spoken of the malign activity in
the world of evil spirits ; and his first followers regarded the
direct opposition of Satan to their preaching as the principal
obstacle which it had to encounter. The great Christian
Reformers of the sixteenth century, Calvin and Luther,
believed in diabolic interference in the world as fully and as
unhesitatingly as they believed in the divine inspiration of
conduct. And in the more recent outbursts of enthusiasm of
which I have already spoken, the great religious leaders have
felt with intensity that they had to contend not with mere
flesh and blood, but with spiritual powers of evil, who thwarted
their endeavours, and stirred up against them the hearts of
such men as were inclined to evil.

The fact of evil inspiration in all human life must be
granted. We must allow that unseen agencies in the world
are ever impelling us to leave the better and choose the

42 EXPLORATIO EVANGELIC A

worse, to forsake the divine guidance and sin against our own
souls. Sad and gloomy as are these facts, they belong to the
very essence of spiritual experience, and no one who regarded
that experience as real could reject them. And it seems
natural to pass on, in the case of evil, as in the case of good
inspiration, from experience to perception, and to say that as
impulses to good come from a God who loves good, so impulses
to evil come from a Devil who loves evil, and some of whose
attributes may be judged from the primary facts of experience.

But the legitimacy of this inference is weakened by other
considerations. Impulse to good must come from a super-
human source, since no other source can be reasonably assumed.
Mr. Clifford's " racial consciousness " in each man could never
lead to the arduous heights of virtue. But most at all events
of our impulses to evil might arise out of inherited tendencies,
might be explained by the facts of atavism. We are descended
from men who were almost on the moral level of apes and
tigers, and the ape and tiger in us is apt to rise from the
ground of the heart again. Reversion to an ancestral type is
a fact familiar to biologists. And some schools of religious
thought have found in this fact an explanation of the attract-
iveness of sin. Even within the New Testament this view is
frequently expressed. St. Paul complains that in his flesh he
finds nothing but evil, a " body of death " ; and St. James
writes, " Every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his
own lust and enticed." And many later Christians have seen,
in the utter perversion and corruption of their own hearts, in
what has been called original sin, quite enough to explain their
declension from good.

Moreover, we now know that many effects in former days,
attributed to the agency of daemons, had other causes. In-
sanity and even epilepsy were in the early days of Christianity
regarded as cases of diabolic possession; and no one now BO
regards them. And the phenomena <>i* witchcraft, which were
in tlif Middle Alts supposed to give daily and hourly evidence
of the interference of evil spirits in the affairs of this life, are
now supposed to have been greatly coloured by imagination.
Moreover, those who have strongly believed in diabolic inspira-
tion have not been consistent one with another in their views

EXPERIENCE AND DOCTRINE 43

as to the source of such inspiration, as one being or many,

;is always present m as only sometimes interfering with life
and the like.

Thus in modern days the belief in a great Power of
spiritual wickedness has lost some of its intensity, though even
now those who have a clear and overpowering sense of tin-
spiritual life feel the working of such a Power, and only
hesitate when the question arises how the facts of thai
working can be put in intellectual form. We have no right
to assume that our modern tendency is the final decision of
human thought ; but it is the tendency of our time, and I see
no reason for making a strong stand against it. The facts of
evil are obvious and sad indeed at all times. And those who
are most closely in contact with them seem unable to resist
the conviction of a constant spiritual tendency to evil in
nature, over and above the radical selfishness of the human
will, and the savage elements hidden under the surface of each
of us. But we need not at present try to go further in the
direction of building up a doctrine of the power of Evil.

It is necessary now to state more exactly the view which
our principles, which are psychological and practical rather
than metaphysical, compel us to take of the character of
religious doctrine. We have shown how certain views as to
the nature of God and man, of sin and of duty, arise directly
out of the experience of life. And we have also shown that
the notion of objectivity in regard to knowledge is due not to
the faculties of knowledge, but to those of action. Will is the
only real thing, and by relation to will the world about us
takes reality in all its three forms : the material world, the
world of other selves, and the spiritual world. The funda-
mental contrasts, I and the world, I and others, I and God,
build up the fabric of the universe. It is the third of these
contrasts which furnishes a basis to the religion of conduct,
and on it we must be content to found religious doctrine.

I am anxious here to avoid, as far as possible, all meta-
physical discussion. Almost all the problems of metaphysics
may be stated, not in the technical language introduced by
Kant, but in the speech of every day. Nevertheless meta-
physical language has the advantage of neatness and precision.

44 EXPLO RATIO EVANGELICA

And it may be well that at this point I should endeavour in
more exact terms to indicate the philosophic position which I
would assume. Objective knowledge in religion is unattain-
able, if by objective knowledge be meant knowledge of things
in themselves out of relation to human experience. All our
knowledge is necessarily and essentially relative to our faculties
and experience, beyond which we can never hope to rise on
this side of death.

But what we may reach, in religious as in other knowledge,
is universal subjectivity and practical objectivity. AVe reach
universal subjectivity when we reach knowledge which is true
not only for us, but for all other human beings, or all other
human beings whose higher faculties are developed, when we
eliminate the mere personal element in our knowledge, and
find that it rests on a secure basis of human nature. What is
true for man as man is the highest human truth. And we
reach practical objectivity when we discover that on which it
answers to act, as if it were true. AVhatever speculative
difficulties remain, if we find knowledge which can be assumed
to be true without leading to unhappiness and failure, we have
reached what is true for us. Thus if the knowledge we reach
is practically objective, and also universally valid, we need not
hesitate to rest in and act upon it. It is the basis provided
for faith by the Maker and Ruler of the world.

If we could reach knowledge objectively valid from the
speculative point of view, it might better satisfy our reason.
But since the rise of the Critical Philosophy we know this
to be impossible. The change which has thus been produced
in our thought has been well compared to the change from a
geocentric to a heliocentric scheme of astronomy. When men
supposed the earth to be flat and the heaven arched above it,
they thought they could use the words up and down in ;i
purely objective sense. But now we know that up is merely
further from (lie centre of the earth, and down is merely
uearer to the centre of the earth. And when the sun is up
above our heads, ii is down beneath the feet of the people of

New Zealand. Yet the terms up and down haw not lost

their validity for the human race. No Longer objectively true,
they are true relatively. And in regard to practical life they

EXPERIENCE AND DOCTRINE 45

arc just as full of meaning as ever they were. In the same
way the discovery by the speculative intellect of the relative
character of religious knowledge does not affect it in the light
of practical life.

When men have any beliefs in religious matters, and talk
about them, the formulation of doctrine is a necessity. No
doubt in our days many men reserve their religious hopes and
beliefs as a sacred secret of the heart, and make no attempt to
give them expression in words. This is, however, an abnormal
phenomenon; and it is evident that if religion is to be any-
thing but a hidden inspiration, if it is to dictate common
action, to make terms with science, to direct organisation, it
must become articulate and express itself in formulae.

The ordinary tests of religious doctrine are determined by
the discussions of the last chapters. It is clear that the mere
understanding, which is a judge of consistency rather than of
truth, can very imperfectly appreciate doctrine. It may in
some cases detect error, but will scarcely lead to truth. It is
mainly to the practical side of our nature that we must look
for guidance in religion as in other fields of active life.

Properly speaking, religious doctrine is the formulation in
terms of intellect of the results of religious experience. It
therefore appears that in order to be justified in the courts of
reason and history it should possess the following notes.

First, it should be based on real experience, and so conform
to our surroundings, and the laws of the universe. It should
be built upon the rock of fact, not on the shifting sands of
fancy and emotion. If it thus conform to reality, it will be
safe as a guide of conduct, for conduct is only safe and success-
ful when it is perfectly adapted to surrounding conditions. In
the physical world we can rule nature only by obeying her; so
in the moral world we can attain the purposes of life only by
conforming to the conditions of life.

Second, the experience on which it is based should
be not temporary or local, but universal or at least general
and permanent. If we consider particular countries,
or particular periods of history, we may find that in
them extreme or morbid phenomena were prominent in re-
ligion. Such was the passion for the hermit's life which

46 EXPLORATIO EVANGELICA

spread in the East under the later Roman Empire, and such
the strange religious aberrations of the sixteenth century in
Germany. At such times of abnormal practice, strange
doctrines also naturally have currency.

Third, the doctrine itself must not be cast in the mould of
false and perverted intellectual views. This is, of course, a
danger which no doctrine can wholly escape, since no systems
of thought are free from error. But at least, when we see in
a doctrine the impress of some metaphysical or scientific views
which are demonstrably false, we are bound to refuse it in its
existing form, and to recur to the experiences on which it is
based with a view to the formulation of a more suitable
doctrine.

Doctrines which are based upon religious experiences, real
and solid, and held by the most of those who reflect, and
which are expressed in the forms of sound philosophic and
scientific system, may well be received as true. Their truth
may not be for all time, since the intellectual and moral con-
ditions of human life are constantly changing, but they are
true for our age at least.

And the knowledge thus reached is objective in the only
sense in which the word objective has any meaning. Hence
to call it relative, though on the speculative side this may be
a correct statement, is apt to mislead. To the intellect it
is relative, but to the will and the faculties of action it is
absolute.1

1 To the question of doctrine in general, and particularly Christian doctrine,
we return in Chapter XXV., and those which follow.

CHAPTEE V

DOCTRINE AND METAPHYSICS

The view that religious doctrine has practical rather than
intellectual grounds, and practical rather than speculative
validity, undoubtedly runs counter to the current views of most
philosophers and theologians, views of ancient standing and
distinguished lineage, which can be traced back to roots which
lie deep in Greek philosophy. It is easy to see how they
arose, in the dawn of scientific thought, and how hard it must
be to move them when fully established.

When the Greeks, in days before the Persian wars, began
to discover the use of the speculative intellect, they naturally
tried their new implement in every possible field of knowledge,
and especially in the highest. They naturally supposed that
their new science of reasoning would enable them to discover
all truth as to the world, man, and the divine nature, and to
develop a natural philosophy and a theology which should be
of complete validity. It was not very long before they found
that for the explanation of the external world observation and
experiment were of more use than thought and argument,
But as regards theology, their over-estimate of reason lasted
far longer. Logical and speculative theology held the field in
the days of the Stoics and Epicureans, and filled the atmos-
phere which was breathed by growing Christianity. It was
not until the rise of the Kantian philosophy in the last
century that speculative schemes of theology received a mortal
blow.

The overvaluing of the intellectual faculties of mankind,

48 EX PLO RATIO EVANGELICA

introduced by the philosophers of Ionia, and propagated by
Plato and Aristotle and the schools which they founded, still
rules the minds of all men who have not been through a
particular schooling. We suppose that the laws of human
thought have some objective and supersensual validity, that
angels must think on our lines. Nay, some philosophers, not
content with thinking that in reason we may claim likeness to
God himself, have ventured to regard the Ruler of the Universe
as pure thought. Thought is doubtless a manifestation of
God : but to accept such an identification as anything but a
symbol is mere presumption in a creature to whom space
has but three dimensions, and whose thinking is absolutely
bounded by time ! The feeblest of insects may rebuke
our conceit. For it has been proved by the experiments
of Sir John Lubbock that ants are very susceptible to
rays of light which are to us non-existent. Butterflies
have a sense of smell of which we can form but a dim notion ;
and the instincts displayed by many other creatures of small
intelligence show us that they have avenues of knowledge
which we cannot even understand. The human mind is like
a piano which has a definite number of notes, and is quite
unable to produce sounds outside its narrow compass. Or it
is like a lantern shining in a vast cave and bringing to our
sight a few of the nearest objects. By means of such a
lantern we may safely guide our steps, though there yawn to
right and left of us abysses which we cannot fathom. So by
means of our poor intellectual faculties we may guide our
lives and form character. But when we fancy that they can
comprehend the vast range of existence, and be rulers of the
universe of possible thought, then we absurdly over-estimate
them, and deserve the blindness which we bring on ourselves
by trying to gaze at the noonday sun.

Metaphysics, as the science which marks out the limits of
human thought, will always be of great value to mankind.

l'.ut metaphysicians who pass those limits, and try to build

■ins in the vasl void beyond, are by the very circumstances

of the case precluded from Lasting success. It seems likely

that for a long while to come such systems will from time to

time arise, and exercise a great influence on thoughtful minds.

DOCTRINE AM) ME TA PH J 'SICS x >

It may be, however, that their utility lies rather in what
they Buggesl than in what they establish. As poetry may
stir the heart with a passion for the supersensual and the
infinite, so may metaphysical systems raise the aspirations of
the soul by furnishing to it a vision of that which transcends
mere experience. Bat the vision passes : it rests upon no
enduring foundation ; and soon another kind of vision takes
it- place in the minds of those devoted to the delights of
philosophy. The walls of the castle are not of stone but of
blocks of ice.

X" dmi I >t, if we could find a basis outside the world
of sense, if there existed any possibility of taking our start
from facts in regard to the Divine Being which could be
proved in an objective sense, and without regard to human
faculties and human experience, this might give us means for
formulating a speculative and permanent theology. But
such knowledge is impossible to man in regard to any
object of experience ; and, if we may so speak, even more
impossible in regard to objects which do not come before our
corporeal senses.

The case as regards the grounds of religious belief has
been put in a satisfactory, perhaps in a final form, in the
celebrated Burnpton Lectures of Dean Mansel, the main argu-
ments of which, whatever we may think of the views which he
bases on those arguments, remain after half a century unrefuted
and unrefutable. Mansel shows clearly into what an infinite
quagmire of absurdity and self-contradiction we fall the moment
we begin to frame speculative propositions in regard to the
Divine Being. He proves that if we start from the assumption
that God is infinite and absolute, we at once place it out of our
power to ascribe to him any definite attribute whatever. To
begin with, an absolute Being cannot be the source of nature,
cannot indeed be a cause at all. "A cause cannot, as such,
be absolute ; the Absolute cannot, as such, be a cause. The
cause, as such, exists only in relation to the effect. On the
other hand, the conception of the Absolute involves a possible
existence, out of all relation." Again, an absolute Being
cannot have consciousness, personality, or any of those qualities
which involve personality. " The Absolute cannot be conceived

4

50 EX PL OR A TIO E VA NGELICA

as conscious, neither can it be conceived as unconscious ; it
cannot be conceived as complex, neither can it be conceived as
simple ; it cannot be conceived by difference, neither can it be
conceived by absence of difference ; it cannot be identified with
the universe, neither can it be distinguished from it." And an
infinite Being in the same way cannot have attributes, since the
attribution of a quality necessarily implies limitation which is
the negation of infinity.

In this kind of sword-play Mansel had few equals ; and as
logical propositions his views admit of no refutation. But as
it is not easy for those who are untrained in the schools of
metaphysic to follow such swift and brilliant fencing, I shall
prefer to put a parallel argument to that of Mansel in simpler
language.

The first article of the prayer-book states that God is of
infinite power, wisdom, and goodness. And these words do no
doubt convey a definite meaning. They have a basis in
experience such as that which I have sketched. But if they
are regarded, not as they should be, as a mere rough attempt
to sum up certain facts of human life, but as they should not
be, as logical propositions, entirely and absolutely true, they
cannot stand for a moment.

A Being of infinite goodness must hate evil ; a Being of
infinite wisdom must know how to destroy it ; a Being of
infinite power must be able to take the necessary steps to that
end. Therefore, the existence of evil is inconsistent with
the existence of such a Being. But evil exists, according to
the universal opinion of Christendom, and so our creed be-
comes hopelessly inconsistent. Again, goodness consists in the
conquest of tendency to evil. With infinite power the con-
quest of tendency to evil becomes impossible, for where there
is no possibility of resistance there can be no conquest.
Therefore infinite power and infinite goodness cannot be
united.

Again, Lei us take the three divine infinities separately.
Infinite power: does this include my power of will % If it .lues,
I as a responsible being do Dot exist, and to punish or reward
me would be monstrous. If it dues not, the power is not
infinite. Bince it is Limited by my will and that of other men.

DOCTRINE A ND ME TA /'//) 'SI( 'S 5 1

[nfinite wisdom: does this include ;t knowledge of all that

shall hereafter come to pass? If it does, free will in man is 1
purely delusive show, since if the future can be known it must
!"• ^iivcnii'il hy rigid unvariable law. If it does not, a wisdom
uncertain as to the future is not infinite, [nfinite goodness:

here we have simply a contradiction in terms, for goodness is
necessarily a thing of limitation and of struggle. "We may
easily see this by looking at its constituent parts. Chastity
implies body parts and passions; courage implies a fear of
danger to be overcome; unselfishness implies a self which is
evil, and so forth. If the parts of virtue imply limitation
so does the whole.

Nor does it help us in the least to say that when we apply
to God the attribute of goodness, we mean something different
from what we mean when we apply it to men. For it is quite
certain that by goodness we either mean human goodness or
nothing. If we do not mean by goodness what we are used to
as human virtue, there can be no meaning in saying that
he is of infinite goodness. If when we say that God is
infinitely powerful and wise, we mean that his power and
wisdom surpass our utmost imagination, we speak wisely. If
when we say that God is infinitely good, we mean that he is
in the world of conduct invariably on the side of goodness, we
again speak wisely. But we must not use the phrases as
counters in a game of intellectual speculation, or as true inde-
pendently of human experience.

The contradictions in which metaphysical theology is at
every step involved arise, according to the views here set forth,
from the fact that theological propositions or dogmas are not
speculatively valid, but are merely the intellectual statement
of inward experiences. There is nothing to prevent the
expressions in doctrine of different sides of experience from
being inconsistent with one another.

A most instructive parallel is furnished by the history of
myth, of which we shall later treat,1 We shall see that myth
also, being a direct embodiment of experience, tends to
inconsistency. A myth embodying one fact of experience is
often inconsistent with a myth embodying another fact of

1 Chapter IX.

52 EXP LOR ATI O EVANGELIC A

experience. And the two myths may for a time live con-
tentedly side by side. But the rationalists and the makers of
systems cannot rest content with contradictions. They labour
to produce a harmony. "When myths are formed by priests or
by logographers into a mythology, they cut ami prune the
separate myths, fitting them into an edifice which serves
certain purposes, enabling Pagans to think reasonably of their
deities.

The same difficulty is met in a similar way in the case of
doctrine. Those who are not troubled with intellectual doubts
easily accept doctrines inconsistent one with the other if they
are alike based on experience. The educated theologian has
been accustomed to try by shaping and cutting doctrines to fit
them according to some preconceived principles of his own into
a theological system. Some such systems have gone to pieces
very soon ; some have survived for ages and had enormous
effect for good or for evil on mankind. Unless or until the
relative character of truth is recognised, systems the main
theses of which are a priori and based rather on reason than
experience are a necessity, and well worthy of the labour of the
highest human intellects. But since Kant struck away the
basis of all metaphysical construction by proving that the
reasonings on which it is founded end in insoluble contradic-
tions, the case is changed. Henceforth doctrinal constructions
should be based not on a priori assumptions but on the facts
of human nature, as determined by inductive psychology. The
edifices may be less imposing, but they will be safer; and they
may, like their predecessors, be adorned with art and embodied
in poetry.

In the illegitimate use of legitimate doctrine some of the
chief offenders have been the doctors of the Church. But they
by no means stand alone. Many modern writers who have
small pretensions to orthodoxy have been almost as much to
blame. Many ami many a good man lias persuaded himself
that the will of Clod is lixed and immutable, and that therefore
prayer cannoi have any efficacy; and under the spell of a mere
pedantic logic has starved his spiritual life. No doubt the laws
of the physical world are, so far as we know, changeless, but
it would be absurd to say that the working of God in the

DOCTRINE AND METAPHYSICS 53

human heart goes ob in fixed and changeless fashion. We all
find by experience that this is not the case. But men fix in
their minds the speculative view that the whole future must
lie open to God and so must be rigidly determined. They
often do aot see that this view is just as fatal logically to the
possibility of free will in man as it is to the efficacy of prayer.

To pray that the tide should not rise, that a tree when cut
down should not wither, and the like, would no doubt be useless.
Such prayer is condemned in the narrative of our Master's
temptation as a tempting of God. But in all cases in which a
human element is involved, prayer becomes legitimate. If we
are in a ship filling with water, and pray that it may not sink,
it is precisely like praying that stones may be made bread.
But if in the natural fashion of weak and foolish man we pray
that amid the wreck our lives maybe preserved, it is impossible
to say that God may not put wisdom into our own hearts or
desire to save us into the hearts of others, so that we may be
rescued and not die. And if we can rise to a higher level and
merely pray that we may be preserved from evil whether in
life or death, such a prayer is a direct appeal to a power of
which we have experience.

But theorists say that God's will must be best, and that if
any prayer of ours lie granted, it will lead to what is worse,
instead of what is better. But here again we have mere
pedantry and assumption. Of God's will in the abstract we
know nothing: we only know God's will as revealed to us in
consciousness and experience. In experience, as we all know,
the best does not always take place. And God's will as
revealed to us does not shower blessings upon those who
do not work for them and pray for them. These, however,
are' deep matters into which we cannot now go further.

A very great part of the religious difficulties of educated
people arises simply because they do not look at facts in their
spiritual life, but start from some a priori and unwarranted
notions, and fall into disgust and despair because they find
them not suited to the facts of life. In ancient days men
followed the same course in regard to the physical world ;
but science could not take a start until they had learned that
the first thing was to use their senses in accurate observation,

54 EXPLORATIO EVANGELICA

before proceeding to construct theories and schemes of the
universe.

These a priori assumptions have no legitimate ground, either
in experience or in reason. It is true that God's will, as
shown in the order of inanimate nature, is, so far as we know,
fixed and changeless. But when we turn to the phenomena of
biology, we find evolution in place of changeless order, and it
is at least a maintainable view that in that evolution we may
trace purpose. And when we proceed to examine consciousness,
we find quite another order of phenomena than that which
prevails in inanimate nature ; we find the will of God progres-
sively revealed, imperfectly effectual, limited by human folly
and wickedness, pleading sometimes successfully and sometimes
unsuccessfully with the children of men. On the other hand,
if we turn from experience to reason, and try to discover what
the nature of God's will is in itself, we cannot be sure that it
is in relation to the mere human condition of time, and therefore
it is equally risky to call it mutable or immutable, since
mutability involves time.

There is, however, a large body of Christians who hold that
although objective and absolute knowledge of God cannot be
reached by any straining of the human intellect, it comes to
us by direct revelation from God himself. What is not possible
to mere man is possible, as they think, to the Christian, because
he can draw from deeper wells than human.

I am not concerned to discuss from the purely a priori
standpoint the question whether it would be possible that
God should reveal in human words some knowledge of the
divine nature as it exists out of relation to man and to the
world. As man would have to interpret any words given by
God, he must needs interpret them in the forms of human
thought and experience, and so drag them down from heaven
to earth. But however that may be, it is the fact that God
has not been pleased thus to reveal himself apart from the data
of human experience, but rather always in terms of it.

History from first to last is full of the self-revelation of
God to men. I shall endeavour, according to my ability, to
Bketch the nature and ways of tliis gradual revelation. But
from first to last it is purely and entirely relative. It is no

DOCTRI.Xi: AND METAPHYSICS 55

revelation to beings in general, lmt to human beings, and to
human beings of a particular age and a particular nation,
although what is highest in it is also most general, and
belongs to man as man. And those great religious teachers
who have been the channel of divine revelation have doI
usually supposed themselves to be stating abstract truths as
to the nature of God. They have all had a message for man.
Out of those messages it is the philosophy of man which has
made great constructions of absolute theology.

This will be clearest it' we consider the teaching of the
Founder of Christianity, so far as it is known to us. Every
Christian will allow that if we learn to think of God as Jesus
Christ thought of him, we shall do all that human nature can
do towards a right knowledge of the divine. And it is a well-
known fact that the nearer we approach the Source of Christi-
anity, the less do we find of speculative divinity.

It has beeu observed that in the synoptic Gospels there
is in no case a reference to God of any abstract quality.
" Your Father in Heaven " is the ordinary phrase employed in
speaking of God. God is no doubt also spoken of as one and
as good: one as opposed to the many gods of heathen nations ;
good as opposed to human imperfection. But there is
nothing in these phrases which passes experience. In the
Fourth Gospel w7e have a statement which may be said to
contain the seeds of speculative theology, "God is a spirit;" but
the phrase comes in such a connection that it must be very
doubtful whether it does not belong rather to the author
of the Gospel than to his Master. And even this phrase may
be taken as a pure summary of experience. In none of the
Gospels do we find any speculative theological lore. Jesus
does not speak, like good Eichard Baxter, of the " Eternal, in-
comprehensible and invisible God, infinite in power, wisdom, and
goodness." It is true that philosophic speculation can evolve
out of passages in the Gospels a scheme, or any number of
schemes, of speculative divinity. And it must even be allowed
that such schemes have served in the past to build up religion
and'to keep meu in the ways of righteousness. But it is open
to any one to question the processes by which current theology
has been constructed out of revelation. And these processes

56 EXPLO RATIO EVANGELICA

have been shown, by criticism, to be sometimes illegitimate.
The misfortune is that those who discover the unsatisfactory
character of speculative theology often proceed to reject the
Christian creed as a thing without basis and meaning. Among
intelligent laymen in our days this procedure is quite usual,
and any views of religion, to find favour with them, must be
independent of creed. Yet in the absence of solid and clear
intellectual foundation, no school of religion can be lasting or
stable. For this reason the reconstruction of creed upon some
other basis than speculative theology has become in our days
an urgent necessity.

It will by this time be abundantly clear that what wTe are
criticising is not religion, and not theology, but a certain
mixture of theology and metaphysics which has gradually arisen
in the Church, taking its origin soon after the end of the first
century, and constantly growing and changing through the
ages of Augustine, Duns Scotus, Luther, until the rise of the
critical philosophy, which has so changed our mental atmosphere
that the growth of so many centuries can grow no longer. The
tree must needs fall, but from its roots new and vigorous
saplings may come forth which may in time become as imposing
and live as long as their predecessor.

CHAPTER VI

RELATIVE RELIGION

Retuhning to consider doctrine in relation to the religious needs
of Iranian nature, we at once see that our argument, though
fitted tn bear a superstructure, is not in itself a construction.
Of course, since religions and sects differ so widely among
themselves, it is clear that what belongs to man as man in
religion cannot be very extensive. It is surprising on how
small a ledge of doctrine a great religion may he built, but
unless it were surmounted by a noble dwelling, the mere ledge
would be a very unsatisfactory resting-place for men. That
which binds men to religions is not the fundamental assump-
tions, which usually lie hidden out of sight, but the positive
doctrines.

Passing from religion in general to Christianity in par-
ticular, we see at once that what is most striking in that
supreme religion is not so much what is common to Christian-
ity with Islam, Buddhism, and other great religions, but rather
what is peculiar to it. It is for this that missionaries have
journeyed and martyrs have died. It is this which supports
the life and comforts the death of thousands in every genera-
tion.

But the doctrines and hopes which make up the framework
of religion as it exists in Europe and America cannot be
justified by the direct appeal to human nature. In the
language which I have already used they have not universal
subjective validity. Objectivity they have in the highest
degree, if we are right in regarding objectivity as born not in

5 8 EX PL OR A TIO E VA NGELICA

the speculative faculties, but in those of action, in will, and
emotion. It is for that reason that any attempt to impugn
them arouses indignation and anger. Men do not grow
heated about that which they can rigidly prove, but about that
which speculatively they cannot prove and yet must hold.
No one was ever burnt for asserting, or for denying, that the
three angles of a triangle are together equal to two right
angles. But hundreds have perished in agony in order to
maintain what was not matter of intellectual conviction, but
doctrine necessary to conduct.

We come here upon truths which it is exceedingly diffi-
cult to set forth in ordinary language without misleading the
unwary, and disgusting the enthusiastic. When we say that
religious doctrine is mostly relative and not absolute, we are
liable to be represented as saying that in matters of doctrine
there is no real right and wrong, but that every one is at
liberty to accept as much or as little as he is disposed. This
is a hideous and fatal misinterpretation of our views. Because
doctrine is more closely hound up with life than with thought,
its truth becomes a thousandfold more important. Bight
doctrine is, as the Church has always maintained, a matter of
life and death ; but the test of rightness is not merely intel-
lectual, but mainly practical. And when we say that in most
doctrine there is an element of illusion, we are liable to be
represented as saying that doctrine is full of delusion, and
cannot retain its hold on educated people. This again is a
complete misrepresentation. It must be observed that if we
use the word illusion in this connexion, we use it not at all
as a synonym for delusion, but to express something which
may sometimes be pernicious, but as often is a divinely ap-
pointed means of progress.

It is true that the dictionaries scarcely justify this use of
the word illusion. Language is made for common everyday
purposes, and does not readily take liner shades of thought.
Matthew Arnold preferred to call doctrine intermixed with
intellectual error by the German name of yUicrglattibe ; but this
word is quite as liable to misunderstanding as the word illu-
sion. We mighl invent new wolds, like Kant and his
followers; but the genius of the English language seems

RELATIVE RELIGION 59

opposed tn this proceeding. We must take our chance of
misinterpretation, reducing that chance, so far as we ••an. by
varying our phrases.

It has been observed by those who have carefully studied
human life that if men saw the ends of their pursuits from the
beginning, the very sinews of action would be cut. From
childhood to manhood, from manhood to old age, we are
occui'ii-'l in the pursuit of various ends, always believing that
in attaining them we shall secure permanent happiness. Bui
when we reach our ends we find that they are not so satis-
factory as we supposed. Something else is necessary to
complete ot to supplement them, and away we go on a fresh
chase, which ends in a like disappointment. If we cease to
aim at something beyond, we cease to live; and yet all our
experience shows that happiness is not permanently attained
by the securing of the successive objects which stimulate us
to incessant activity.

The practical illusions of life have been the theme of
moralists and of satirists since the human race attained to
reflection. And yet to men in whom the blood is warm and
energy keen, moralists and satirists will speak in vain. They
will only be listened to in days of weariness, and during the
reactions which follow on exertion. As the kitten plays and
the lark sings, so healthy human nature will energise in the
direction of that which attracts it. " Illusion is the poetry of
life," and not only the poetry, but the motive spring : and the
nation which has the most illusions is frequently the most
energetic and aspiring.

Great preachers have laboured to reconcile the facts of
illusion with the existence of a divine providence and a God
who loves truth. Perhaps no preacher lias written better on
the subject than F. W. Piobertson, in his sermon on the
Ulusiveness of Life. " We are led through life as we are
allured upon a journey. Could a man see his route before
him — a flat, straight road, unbroken by bush or tree or
eminence, with the sun's heat burning down upon it, stretched
out in dreary monotony — he could scarcely find energy to
begin his task ; but the uncertainty of what may be seen
beyond the next turn keeps expectation alive." "It is thus

60 EXPLORATIO EVANGELIC A

that God has led on His world. He has conducted it as a
father leads his child, when the path homeward lies over many
a dreary league. He suffers him to beguile the thought of
time, by turning aside to pluck now and then a flower, to
chase now a butterfly ; the butterfly is crushed, the flower
fades, but the child is so much nearer home, invigorated and
full of health, and scarcely wearied yet." " We do not preach
that all is disappointment — the dreary creed of sentimentalism ;
but we preach that nothing here is disappointment, if rightly
understood." " God's promises are true, though illusive, far
truer than we at first take them to be."

In all the justifications of illusion there is a tone of
melancholy. And this is natural enough. For no one while
under the power of illusions wants to justify them, but is
content to live in them. When disillusion comes, however, it
is likely to pass into pessimism and despair unless there be a
justification. In a time of self-consciousness like ours, illusion
is of far less power than in younger and more unsophisticated
ages. We are easily discouraged, " and thus the native hue of
resolution is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought."
And there are no steps backward. We must find a remedy,
not by returning to what is behind, but by pressing on to that
which is before, and bidding thought to seek for a remedy for
thought. When childhood disappears in the awkwardness of
youth, we may regret the change, but the remedy lies with
time, and the consummation of the process already begun, not
in a second childhood.

The thing on which liobertson wishes to insist appears to
be this. From the ethical point of view, and the view of
religion, the only results of any true value in life are the
formation of character within, and the accomplishment of the
divine will in the world and in society. Yet if these ends
were set directly before men in their pure and naked
spirituality, they would not attract any except those who had
attained a high grade in the spiritual life. To persuade men
to pursue what is really good, the divine wisdom lias hidden
it under tin' mask of a more attractive seeming good, which is
what we call illusion. Hence the illusiveness of life. But
the deception IS Dot of the kind by which evil men lure their

RELA T1VE RELIGION 61

victims to destruction, but of the kind by which wise parents
induce theii children to do what it is their duty and their
health to do, which yet they would never be brought to do
except by stern necessity or gentle attraction.

There are illusions of the intellect as well as illusions of the
imagination, and it is with these that we have to deal in the
present chapter. As men naturally suppose happiness to be
a thing external to ns to be attained and grasped, so they
naturally suppose truth to be an external thing to be reached
and held. I mean, of course, nut the mere truths of science
and fact, which are of a more definite kind, but truths of
ethical and religious character, truth in matters beyond sense.
And as in the result happiness turns out to be a thing not
grasped from without, but developed from within, so it is with
the higher truth. Such truth is really gathered from within,
not acquired from without ; it is gained by action rather than
by intellect. Truth which those who set it forth regard as
final, and which each successive generation thinks to be won
for all time, is really a guide in life and a basis for the
formation of higher character. We seek objective truth as we
seek objective happiness, and not only are our faculties
exercised and trained in the search, but we also attain relative
truth, truth as seen through the coloured glasses of our age
and our school.

We are told by Professor Stanton x that it is now generally
recognised, even by orthodox critics, that in the history of the
Jewish race we may discern a good deal of divinely appointed
illusion. " Illusion, followed by the discipline of experience
and disappointment, played no unimportant part in the
formation and definition of the clearest Messianic hope of
Israel." And orthodox critics may in time find themselves
able to go a little further, and to allow that illusion is one of
the constant accompaniments of all religious life and progress.
The reception of the best and most fruitful religious ideas does
not immediately convey accurate knowledge either of the
present or the future, nor does it exempt from the limitations
and faultiness of existing schools of svstematic thought.

Some able writers, such as Dr. Hatch, and to some extent
1 Jm-is'i and Christian Messiah, p. 97.

62 EXPLORATIO EVANGELIC A

even Matthew Arnold, have written of the evolution of set
schemes of doctrine out of life and feeling as if it were a
process of mere degeneration and decay, and wholly to be
regretted. And when we compare the Athanasian Creed, or
even the earlier creeds of the Christian Church, with the life
of our Founder, and the depth and simplicity of the Sermon on
the Mount, it is hard not to share their views to some extent.
It is also certain that religious life and passion belong to the
great, the formative ages of spiritual life, the creeds to the
times of less vitality and shallower feeling. But human
nature being what it is, the formation of creeds is the necessary
sequel of every religious awakening. And the creeds of the
past, the creeds which still survive amongst many of us,
contain a large element of illusion.

It is usually the part of a wise man not to attempt to
destroy illusious, whether in life or in belief. Let those who
are under their sway so remain, so long as illusions will bring
them satisfaction. But when illusion is once recognised as
such, it becomes necessary to seek for a remedy. Robertson,
in the passage above quoted, suggests a remedy for the despair
which comes of the discovery that practical life is full of
illusion. Is any such remedy to be found also in matters of
belief? Can we show to those who have discovered the
illusiveness of their traditional creed, that nevertheless much
of it may be justified in the highest courts of consciousness ?
Undoubtedly we can.

The conservative principle which we seek is to be found
in the distinction first clearly insisted on by Kant between
speculative and practical reason, between knowledge in matters
of sense, and conviction in matters which transcend sense:
in a word, between truth of fact and (ruth of Idea.

What truth of fact, scientific verity, is, every one in these
days knOWS well. What ideal truth is men do not realise

with the same clearness and certainty. The sudden expansion
of scientific knowledge has left us materialist, and though the
laws of conduct and of belief are as Important to us as to any
of our ancestors, we do not feel the importance as did many
of them.

Yet it is very easy to illustrate the nature of ideal truth.

RELATIVE RELIGION 63

An interesting phase of life is lived out in a street of London
or of Paris. [fa plain accurate account of what took place LS
written, we call it biography, and expect strict conformity to
t'a-i. Bui Instead of writing biography, our author may
change names ami disguise localities, though strictly adhering
to the order of events. Does his work become a lie ? Surely
not ; but he has taken the first step towards ideal truth.
Perhaps, again, wishing to avoid personalities, he disguises and
changes also the course of events, translating it into another
plane. He has now in a sense given up truth to fact. Bui
he is still under the dominion of ideal truth. His tale is
bound to conform to the conditions and possibilities of human
life, to the facts of human nature, else it becomes monstrous.
Here we have ideal truth of one kind, truth in fiction.
Bentham used to say that " all poetry is misrepresentation,"
but it is obvious that on the contrary good poetry must be
tine, cither to a lower or to a higher range of realities.

But ideal truth exists not only in reference to human
history, but also in reference to action and the springs of
action. When a certain course of action makes for the con-
tinuance and the progress of mankind, or of any group of men,
then the beliefs incorporated with that course have ideal truth.
They are in accord with the conditions of our life in the world ;
they fit our surroundings, and are a part of the harmony of
human life. When these beliefs do not strictly accord with
scientific outward fact, it is doubtless a weakness in them,
and a seed of destruction ; yet for a time, at all events, the
truth which they represent may be higher and more important
than the truths which they contradict.

If we look at human life in what may be termed a
physiological aspect, studying it as we should study a living
organism, we shall see how both kinds of truth suit our
surroundings, and how the conformity to either gives advantage
in the struggle for existence. To judge rightly of the facts of
the visible universe, to rightly connect cause with effect in
chemistry and in biology, obviously brings success in the battle
of life. To cherish the views and the beliefs as regards things
outside sense which go with and belong to nobler, more
energetic, and more manly courses of action, must, if man is

64 EXPLORATIO EVANGELIC A

progressive, on the whole be expedient, and tend to the good
of the possessors. To one battling with physical nature, the
farmer, the artisan, or the engineer, the truth of science may
be nearest, and may at least seem most important. But to
other men, to whom conduct is the most important part of life,
and who are not immediately wrestling with the secrets of
nature, the ideal truth which helps conduct will be far
more important than mere scientific truth.

Religious beliefs necessarily contain more of ideal than of ■
scientific or strictly historic truth. And thus it may easily
come to pass, that although a given belief contains a certain
amount of intellectual error, yet it cannot be denied without the
introduction of a larger and more serious error. This is the case
even in practical life. When a man is aiming at some success
in life from which he expects great satisfaction, the monitor
who shows him that the satisfaction will not be solid really
often leads him into error, for the satisfaction will accompany
the activity, though not in the way expected. And this is
quite as much the case as regards belief and intellect. To
many Christians there have only been possible two views in
regard to the Bible : either that it is the word of God and
infallible, or the word of man and an imposture. And to
such, the abandonment of the doctrine of the infallibility of
Scripture would be to descend to a lower level of truth, as
well as to lose a guide of life. In the same way, it is
certainly nearer the truth to believe that God is in his eternal
being virtuous with human virtue, than to deny the divine
goodness altogether.

If the views as to the all sufficiency of truth which prevail
in some of our scientific schools be founded, and if truth be
regarded as the precise correspondence between thought and
experience, then such phenomena as the spread of a noble
religion by views which are demonstrably false seem fatal to
the notion of a providential governance "I' the world. But
the views mentioned are but a modern rendering of the
false Platonic doctrine of the predominance of thought over
feeling and will, a doctrine which is itself a good instance oi
illusion, since, though contrary to the facts of human nature,
it is yd necessary to the full development of scientific thought,

RELATIVE RELIGIOh n5

[f thinking men had fully realised in all ages the narrow
limits of thought, we should not have grown as we have
grown in the understanding of the universe.

If we examine the doctrines which have contributed to
human progress, we shall, I believe, discover that even when
they do not correspond to the truth of experience, yet they
represent the negation of what is even less true than them-
selves. The belief current among the earliest Christians in
a speedy Second Advent has been shown by experience not
to correspond with fact. Yet at bottom it was but an ex-
aggerated and passionate expression of the superiority of the
spiritual to the material in life. To a world sunk in indulgence
and materialism it proclaimed the evanescence of that which
could be seen, the importance of that which could not be seen.
And although Christ did not come, as his followers expected,
in the clouds of heaven, he came none the less really to reiim
on earth with growing sway, while the Roman Empire
crumbled to dust.

If we try to realise the state of mind of men at the time,
we shall see that those who denied the Second Advent would
be in almost all cases not the men who saw truth more clearly,
but the men who saw it less clearly. Few indeed would
reject the belief on the ground that " the Kingdom of God
cometh not with observation." But many would reject it
because it seemed impossible that to a Galilean peasant such
power should be given from above that he could overturn
the vast fabric of the Roman Empire. And many would
reject it because the notion of the coming of such a judge
would be intolerable to them. Thus at the time those who
rejected the belief in the Second Advent would almost neces-
sarily be more in the wrong than those who received it. And
that in this and in a hundred other cases a divine impulse was
mixed with intellectual error is but in accordance with all the
history of revelation.

The belief in a speedy Advent wore itself slowly out, with-
out producing a violent reaction. But there are many beliefs
which partake largely of illusion, yet which may be for a time
keystones of morality. In dealing with such one is often
at a great loss. Perhaps the best precedent which can be

5

66 EX FLORA TIO EVANGELICA

followed is that set by Jesus, according to our accounts, in
dealing with the Jewish Sabbath. The doctrine of the Sabbath,
connected in the minds of the Jews with the tale of the rest-
ing Creator, was one of the main props of Jewish morality.
Rather than break the Sabbath, Jewish armies had allowed
themselves to be massacred. To touch the institution was to
touch a leading nerve, so to speak, of the Jewish community.
It was to run the risk of undermining the system which made
the Jews as regards religion superior to the surrounding peoples.
Yet as regards the Sabbath, Jesus himself is represented as
having introduced the relative point of view. " The Sabbath
was made for man, not man for the Sabbath." He puts as a
basis for the doctrine, in place of a divine command without
relation to human nature, the facts of man's religious needs. He
transposes the whole doctrine from the absolute to the relative
key. But in so doing he is careful not to sanction a hasty
rejection of it. It stands on a new basis, but it still stands.
The difference is that what is made for man is subject to
modification according to man's needs and the demands of the
religious life.

It is precisely this principle of the Master which the
upholders of relative religion propose to carry out. The carry-
ing out involves grave dangers, but he did not shrink from
them, and we should not. We have a positive duty to truth ;
though it is also a duty of charity to strive to prevent as far
as possible the hard and naked truth from doing harm to honest
believers.

It is very dangerous, often disastrous, to attack as mere
error the set of religious doctrines which a man has inherited
or acquired. The attack, if successful, will bring in scepticism
ten times for one time in which it merely converts to anothei
set of religious doctrines. There is infinitely less danger in
criticising, not a scheme of doctrine, but merely the way in
which it is held. Such attack will have no effect at all on
those who are uneducated or wanting in the philosophic
faculty. It is ordained in the constitution of the world that
those who require intellectual illusion will cling to it. Just
as the young and warm-blooded cleave to practical illusions,
even in spite of experience, so those who arc young and uu-

RELA TIVE RELIGION

trained in thought will cling to intellectual illusions in spite
of argument. And those who accept the scheme of experi-
mental religion can reconstruct their beliefs on a different level.

So long as the mind remains, in the matter of religious
knowledge, in the absolute key, if we may use that expression,

any sort of disillusion must bring pain and confusion. And
it is partly because men's minds are usually in that key that we
see around us in the religious world so much scepticism and so
much indillerence. Education and culture necessarily destroy
the foundations of absolute religion, so that it daily withers
more and more. Hence so many of the educated drift into
sceptical indillerence ; so many strive to keep religion like a
hothouse flower, which they dare not expose to the cold winds
and buffetings of the world ; so many try to keep the principles
of faith, while giving up anything in the nature of a creed.
Hence to many education and knowledge, which should open
the doors of wider happiness, prove the source of misery and
irresolution.

But those who boldly realise that religious doctrine has
reference far less to speculation than to practice, and that a
certain amount of subjectivity necessarily clings to it, escape
from this painful position. They will seek earnestly to reduce
this subjectivity as far as they can, certainly to eliminate from
it all of a merely personal character, and all that belongs to
narrow surroundings. J hit what belongs to man as man, what
belongs to the higher races of men, and especially what belongs
to our worthiest predecessors in religious thought, has a sacred
claim upon us. Being men, as the Greeks would have said, we
must think in human fashion. And being Christians or
Englishmen, it is as such that we must feel and think. The re-
ception of this doctrine or of that is not the attainment of an
eternal truth, but it is taking a peep of some revelation of
God, or of man in relation to him. And those who refuse to
accept the doctrine suited to their mind and heart run the
danger of closing against themselves the doors of the better
life.

And that the acceptance of a relative point of view need
not mean the eclipse of faith may easily be shown. The
idealists have proved beyond the possibility of reply that our

68 EXPLORATIO EVANGELICA

knowledge of the external world is relative : that is, that our
experience of it is not and cannot be, as we suppose, direct and
objective. I have already maintained, in a previous chapter,
that it is made objective not by sense or intellect, but by will
and feeling. Our knowledge of it is relative in just the same
way as our knowledge of religious truth is relative. Yet
the idealists, so long as they are sane, and mix in the world,
do not differ from other men in their practical convictions as
to the world. The curtain of intellectual doubt, hung up in
the background of the mind, in no way stops their free
outlook, or stands in the way of vigorous action. In the
same way may those who regard doctrine as relative, yet
keep their lives in accord with what they accept as best
for them in it.

It must be allowed that there is an obvious difficulty in
passing from the absolute to the relative point of view in
religion, and in placing the test of religious truth rather in will
than in intellect. For in matters of science there is a definite
true and false for man as man. What is true for A is true
for B also. Whether two sides of a triangle are greater than
the third, whether gold is heavier than iron, and the like, are
not matters on which variety of opinion is tolerable. In these
cases one view is right, and all which differ from it are wrong.
Certainly there might be advantages of a kind, if religious truth
were of this character ; but in the constitution of the Mrorld it
is otherwise. There is no human possibility of framing a
scheme of speculative religious truth thus objective.

If, however, the test of doctrine be practical, does it not
follow that it may be the duty of A to accept a certain
belief and pursue a certain course of action, and at the
same time the duty of B to thwart him, or even to expel him
from the community, for such beliefs and conduct ?

To some extent this is the case in an imperfect world.
Our primary duty is to do what we, conceive to be the will (if
God, and in so doing we may sometimes come into collision
with others quite as conscientious and devoted as ourselves.
No one can live in the world, and no one can read history,
without very soon finding tins out. But in proportion as men
take ;i higher and nobler line, and more completely subordinate

RELA TI \ E RELIGIi >.\ 69

their selfish impulses to the higher voice, their purposes will
become purer and nobler, and their chance of collision with
others like-minded smaller. It is the "because I am 1 " which
is the cause of most of the painful struggles and rivalries of
the world.

It is the pursuit by individuals of their obvious and im-
mediate good which is usually harmful to society. In pursuing
their own highest good, in following the voice of conscience,
men benefit society. For we cannot suppose that the indi-
vidual is the work of one creative power, and society of
another, so that there should be a clashing of purpose between
the two. Our spirit and conscience come from the same
source whence society originates. So in obeying the voice of
conscience, and of the Deity who speaks in conscience, we
must needs be doing the best we can for those about us. In
the case of a great machine, the due working of the whole
depends upon the proper fulfilment of function by each separate
wheel and valve and bar, according to the design and purpose
of the engineer. In the same way the good working of a
society depends upon the good working of the individuals of
whom the society is made up. There is a kind of pre-existing
harmony in the matter, which has to be worked out in
practice.

No religious writer would maintain that all needs and
aspirations which have a religious character are of necessity
justified, and necessarily lead to goodness and truth. This is,
like all the phases of the problem of the existence of evil, a
difficult matter to deal with, but it is necessary at least to
mention it. Wherever in the world there is a good thing,
there is also an evil thing which imitates it, and tries to pass
under cover of likeness to it. If virtue is a mean between
two vices, both of these vices try to pass as different sides of
the virtue. Rashness calls itself courage, and sentimental
weakness calls itself charity ; prudery calls itself purity. So
the solemn experiences of the higher life, and the noble im-
pulses imparted by God to the soul, are mocked by a host of
feelings and impulses which imitate them as angels of darkness
imitate the angels of light. Nor is there any easy outward or
external means of discriminating between the truth and the

7o EXPLORATIO EVANGELICA

imposture. From the point of view of natural history we
might call them closely allied, just as a lovely flower and a
poisonous weed may be from the botanical point of view
species of the same genus.

It is not for reason to discern between the spirits or trace
the imperceptible line between faith and credulity, between
religion and superstition. The line only becomes clear from
practical working. That the Christian who does his best, and
tries to purge his natural darkness by heavenly light, learns
to discern between good and evil in the impulses which
come from without has always been a commonplace in the
Christian Church since the days of the Founder, who declared
that if any man would do the will of God he should be taught
what that will was, that obedience is the true organ of spiritual
discernment. It is an intellectual paradox and a practical
truism, like most of the theses of the higher life. However
formidable in theory, the difficulty of discernment does not
occupy a great space in the practical life of healthy men.

CHAPTER VII

THE IXSI'IIIATIOX OF HISTORY

Tins far T have dealt with the statics of religious belief.
Taking man as he exists in civilised society, with developed
powers and feelings, I have tried to show how the exercise of
those powers and the very existence of those feelings lead him
to the conviction of the existence and working in conduct of a
divine Power. But religion, as we find it in the world, is not
thus mainly a matter of personal revelation to individuals, save
in noteworthy cases. The great mass of our religious beliefs
we do not directly form from experience, but inherit from our
ancestors, and find already embodied in religious books and in
the formularies of churches. Religion is in fact rather re-
vealed to the race by slow degrees of historical progress than
given to each individual in the course of living. All striking
and powerful individuals have certain beliefs, and those the
deepest seated of all, which belong to them personally and are
the basis of their higher life. But such convictions, even in case
of the few, can be but a small part of their creed. And with
the great majority of mankind, the basis as well as the super-
structure of religion is received from others by inheritance,
example, and teaching.

We have, therefore, to turn from psychology to history, and
to investigate the nature of this revelation to the race. And
if we do so, we shall at once find that our new investigation runs
parallel to our previous study. The analogies between the facts
of religious belief in the individual and the facts of religious
belief in the race are extraordinarily close and most suggestive.

72 EX I'LO RATIO EVANGELIC A

By religious and irreligious alike in these days history is
acknowledged as an evolution. But to the religious it is an
evolution which takes place in accordance with what may best
be spoken of in our imperfect language as purpose, and
under the direction of divine control. All might agree that
good and evil impulses mould the development of societies,
but according to the Christian view the good impulses come
from God.

It would lead us too far were we to try to discover whence
men acquire a conviction that history has a meaning, and
social evolution a tendency. There may be some who are led to
that view by the study of history itself, and who find such a hypo-
thesis necessary to its understanding. Far more people make the
discovery in the course of living, finding that their own lives,
and the lives of friends, are enigmas, and remain enigmas until
they light on this way of interpreting them ; and still more
probably never had to discover the religious basis of society,
because they never doubted it. They were taught in childhood
that the world was under divine governance, and never felt dis-
posed to doubt it, except in those gray moments which come
now and then in the lives of all, when one might doubt of all
truth and virtue, and leave " not even Lancelot brave, nor
Galahad clean."

A firm and abiding belief in the divine control of human
progress is, in most cases, the result of a certainty of the reality
of divine inspiration in the heart. There is nothing like
experience for producing conviction. And men naturally feel
that the God who has guided themselves will also surely guide
the society, the church, the nation of which they are members.
In the light shed by the facts of conduct we learn to follow
the gradual transformation of society by the reception of divine
ideas.

Some philosophic historic schools have made up their
minds that God cannot work in history, because, if it were so,
;i science of history would be impossible. But this surely is a
cobweb which may easily be brushed aside. No exact science
of history is possible. We shall never be able to foretell the
future of a nation as we foretell an eclipse. But looking on
history in tin; past, we can range its phenomena and sec its

THE INSPIRATION OF HISTORY 73

drift : first, because human aature is, in the main, invariable,
or but slowly variable ; and, second, because the divine control
of history is not fortuitous and erratic, but continuous, though
purpose can be but dimly and occasionally traced. For a
theorist to decide that, with a view to the convenience of his
theories, the working of divine ideas must be banished from
the world, seems an extraordinary piece of presumption. It is
but a step further in the same direction to decide that tin-
will and the activity of rulers and of men of genius have no effect
on the course of history. Those who would expel God from
history must also, to be consistent, expel all plan and purpose
(if man from history. The inner necessity, and inward self-
determination, of which we have spoken in earlier chapters,
bear fruit in practice, and are continually affecting the course
of history. All history is indeed in one aspect only the
register of successive acts of human volition. Therefore, any
attempt to construct an external science of history on the basis
of statistics, of climatic influence, of race-tendency, must needs
bring very imperfect results, omitting precisely the things
which most need explanation, and proceeding upon analogies
which are utterly misleading. It is much like working out
chemical problems by mathematical methods; perhaps still more
like trying to compose a piece of music on some scheme of
mathematical progressions and proportions. And this is true
not only of the course of history, but of every investigation
built on the ground of human nature. And it is truest of all
in matters of ethics and of religion, since these are above all
things purely human, inward, and practical, and in the smallest
degree under the dominion of physical law.

The history of races and nations is much like the history
of individuals writ large. And the course of ethical and
religious development in a nation is closely parallel to its
course in an individual. The individual is in the main con-
trolled and directed by forces over which he has no power, the
forces of inherited tendency and of circumstance. But yet
each man has within him the possibility of rising to a higher
or sinking to a lower level, as he follows the better or the
worse impulses. So also the nation has but a limited power
of self-determination. Its evolution has followed a definite

74 EXPLO RATIO EVANGELIC A

line, and must continue to move on in the same direction.
No nation can safely break with its past history, and follow
an entirely new line in morals or religion. The degree of
freedom in this respect varies greatly, it is true, from nation to
nation, and from age to age. Some peoples, of which the Chinese
have been the extreme type, change very slowly and seem un-
able to absorb new ideas. Other peoples, of whom a kindred race,
the Japanese, offer a good type, seem able to make a complete
revolution in feelings and ideals within a short period. If we
consider Europe, we shall observe that ages of change, and
ages of stagnation, or of reaction, succeed one another accord-
ing to laws which we cannot trace. Probably at no time in
history have social and religious as well as material and
industrial changes proceeded so fast as in our own days. The
philosophy of change should therefore have special attractions
for us.

The principle of progress and of change consists in im-
pulses or tendencies surging up, we do not see whence, into the
ways of human life. Just as in the spring time the sap begins
to rise in the trunks of the trees ready to take various forms,
and to develop into bark and leaf and flower and fruit, so a
formless tendency or purpose makes itself felt in the hearts of
communities. And by degrees it works itself out. Its results
occupy all the fields of human activity. In the field of
politics it crystallises into institutions ; in the field of con-
duct into customs ; in the intellectual field into systems of
thought and doctrine. It passes constantly into new mani-
festations which leave permanent marks on the history of the
world.

And as in the case of individual lives, so in the case of
communities divine inspiration may be regarded in two ways.
Firstly, as a revelation to the community of the facts <>f theiT
relations to the powers which rule the world, and a consequent
perception that only so long as those relations air in a normal
and healthy condition will the common life be happy and
prosperous. And, secondly, as an impulse or a succession of
impulses towards the better life, towards purer modes of living
and the pursuit of higher purposes, Sometimes the enlighten-
ment may come first and the impulse afterwards. But more

THE INSPIRA Th W ( >F HIS /'< )R Y 75

often the impulse comes al least as early as the perception, so
that the life of peoples develops in a higher direction before
they are aware of the eternal fitness of things which makes
that direction higher. Inspiration and revelation are two sides
of the same progress; the revelation is first in order of logic,
but in order of time the inspiration, at least in a vague and
tentatory shape, is usually the earlier.

It is through the personal life and character of inspired
individuals, and through the national life which belongs to
societies, working from within outwards, that the divine ideas
gradually permeate the world, and create a new order in society.
And as the individual does not lose but gain in character and
will by following the higher light, so communities, by receiving
the divine ideas, gain a more intense national feeling and life.

It is probable that the divine ideas may be traced in their
work not only in the world of humanity, but also in that of
nature. According to Mr. A. Wallace, whose authority in such
a matter ought surely to be great, " a superior intelligence has
guided the physical development of man in a definite direction
and for a special purpose." And there are eminent biologists
who have extended this view from the physical frame of man
to that of animals and of plants. They hold that though
natural selection is undoubtedly the order of nature, natural
selection is guided in certain directions rather than others by a
superhuman wisdom, and that not in the case of man only,
but of other dwellers in the world, the changes which occur
show special adaptation to needs yet far off in the future. If
so, the ideas of God must play a great part in all biological
development. But I cannot venture to pursue the subject,
because I am not a biologist, but a student of mankind. And
indeed, if our regard is confined to man, the task before us is
still one of quite sufficient magnitude.

In the history of nations, as in the history of individuals,
there are moral crises, when the direction of the whole develop-
ment is changed. For example, at the time of the great
Keformation there was a crisis in Europe. Half the continent
definitely threw off the ancient tendencies of the Church ; the
other half continued them, though in a modified direction. It
was a remarkable instance of what biologists call reversion to

76 EXP LO RATIO EVANGELIC A

type : an attempt to remount the course of history, and take
a new departure from an earlier point in the history of the
Church.

From the historic point of view we have no right to con-
demn a 'priori such reversions. If a church is in a state of
decay and degradation, then reversion to an earlier state is a
good thing, even if the lines of development have to be par-
tially broken. In fact, not only did the Protestants in the
sixteenth century revert, but also the Catholics, though in a
less violent fashion.

It is curious to notice how, in the Protestant appeal to
earlier Christianity, the date of the type reverted to has been
constantly receding. At first the appeal was to the early
Church, then to the Apostles, then to the Founder Himself, the
notion being that Christianity came into the world pure and
perfect, but was progressively corrupted. It is more in accord
with modern ideas of history to think that as Christianity
grew it absorbed both good and evil, in some ways improved
and in some retrograded. Which was really the golden age is
a question which cannot be settled apart from an appeal to
some accepted standard of good and evil.

Of course change and progress are by no means the same.
Just as individuals may degenerate, as well as progress, so
nations and societies also may change, not for the better, but
for the worse. Nations, like individuals, may suffer from
disease, moral and intellectual paralysis, and decay. Not only
may the lower and baser elements in the national life gain for
a time the upper hand, but also it not seldom happens that the
impulses which move peoples and societies in a new direction
are radically bad impulses, and bring with them the seeds of
degradation and misery. Why this should be so we know not.
It is part of the problem of the existence and power of evil in
the world. Sometimes when we trace out the causes of
decline, we find them in the indulgence by a people of the
baser part of their nature, cruelty, oppression, cowardice,
materialism. But sometimes in nations, ;is in individuals, a
dark and (nil impulse seems to come from some hidden source,
to mislead the people, as a false prophet might mislead them,

into ways which lead to destruction.

THE TNSPJRA T10N OF HIS TORY 77

National progress, then, has to contend against two kinds

of opposition : the opposition which springs out of the evil of
human nature, and the misleading and corrupting impulses
which arise in the world Bide by Bide with good impulses, and
Btruggle with the latter for dominion. That on the whole, at
least in modern history, progress does, in spite of everything,
take place, all must believe who are not given over to pessim-
ism. But in examining short periods of history we by do
means always find progress : sometimes a general retrogression ;
more often still, progress in some respects counterbalanced by
retrogression in other respects.

In the present chapter it is of progress that I propose to
treat ; and if our tone seem too hopeful and optimistic it will
be easy in succeeding chapters to supply the necessary correc-
tive of doubt and hesitancy.

The divine ideas is a phrase which sounds somewhat vague
and indefinite : nay, worse, it carries with it some associations
of scholastic hair-splitting, and may offend so practical and so
definite an age as ours. But the vagueness of the phrase is
perhaps a recommendation, and we shall hope before long to
reduce that vagueness within the limits of more definite
meaning.

By divine ideas is here meant those noble and life-giving
religious impulses or tendencies which, by degrees, variously,
in various ages, become displayed upon the theatre of the
world's history, and are worked into the framework of human
society. So far as wTe see them they are always working,
always becoming ; they present themselves in a thousand
aspects to a million minds ; never can they be wholly grasped
or comprehended ; we can no more absorb an idea than we can
absorb the light of the sun. Our business is to search them
out, to accept them, to believe them, to live by them, and so
far as we can to lead others into their light and truth. At
best we have the heavenly treasure in earthen vessels.

Perhaps no better plan can be found, with a view to
further explaining the nature of the divine ideas, than to try
various words by which men have endeavoured to speak of
them, and to see in what way each of these words is defective.

They have been spoken of as religious doctrines. But a

78 EX PLO RATIO EVANGELIC A

doctrine belongs to the understanding, not to the heart, to man's
speculative, not his practical faculties. It is quite true, as it
will be necessary at some length hereafter to show, that those
who are inspired and animated by a religious idea are impelled
by the demands of the understanding to give that idea a body
in the phrases of doctrine, to place it as a proposition, or set
of propositions, amid the other furniture of the mind. But it
is impossible thus to include a living idea within the four
corners of a verbal proposition. At most one aspect of it can
be fixed for a time, to the great help of man's intellect ; but the
form of doctrine soon decays and the idea demands new and
more appropriate embodiment. To suppose that the thoughts of
God can be finally arranged into a body of divinity, or the con-
secutive clauses of a creed, shows a most vain and presumptuous
misreading and under-estimating of them. It is to confuse
God's work with man's work ; life with thought ; the infinite
reality with the limited and closely conditioned phenomenon.
Such confusion is, alas, only too common. It vitiates the
teaching of one of the noblest as well as ablest of the religious
writers of our time, Cardinal Newman, who, in his Development
of Christian Doctrine, after writing admirably about religious
ideas in the first chapter, gradually glides, in the second and
third, into a confusion between them and mere doctrinal views
and dogmas.

There is less objection to calling our ideas revelations.
For revelations they are indeed, given to men not at once, but
by slow degrees, and with slow working transmuting the tissue
of society. But, unfortunately, the word revelation has become,
through constant misuse and gradual degradation, in a high
degree misleading. Among Evangelicals, it is applied exclu-
sively to the Canonical Scriptures, which may be, and are, full
to overflowing of the greatest of the divine ideas yet brought
within human sight, but contain them only as the moon con-
tains the light of the sun. A revelation is generally supposed
to be some piece of knowledge which a man could not, acquire
by th^ use <»f his own faculties, but which is dropped ready-
made into his mind by divine power; and this way of looking
at things is so radically at variance with the facts of the world,
both spiritual and physical, that it can only be set aside as

THE INSPIRATION OF HISTORY 79

false and misleading. The smallest of its errors is that it
falls into the confusion spoken of in the last paragraph between
idea and doctrine.

Nearer still to the mark would it be to speak of ideas as
inspirations or impulses. For in thus speaking account would
be made of the main truth that it is to the will and the heart
lather than to the intelligence that the divine ideas chiefly
present themselves. And it may be allowed that so far as
individuals are concerned an idea will usually come, not
merely by an inspiration, but as an inspiration, impelling him
by its life-giving and life-directing force to " burn what he
had adored, and adore what he had burned," to live in future
a life which is not his own but another's. Notwithstanding
this, the notion of inspiration is too much confined to the
individual to be suitable when it is mainly societies of which
we are thinking. We do not think of a community or a
nation as inspired. And besides, in inspiration we have, so
to speak, the pure form without the substance. The ideas
come as impulses, but not as vague impulses : rather as cmite
definite tendencies in certain directions.

The ideas might also be spoken of as experiences : the ex-
periences of the higher life which at every point penetrates the
lower life, the experiences of the working of a Power, not our-
selves, in the inner shrine of consciousness. This word experi-
ence is in common use in many Christian circles. And it is
perhaps the best term to use in regard to the inspiration of
individual heart and conduct. But it is less appropriate when
we speak of societies and nations. For seldom, save in times
of strong religious revival, does the action of the divine ideas
on society appear so clear and definite that it can be well
spoken of as experience. Inward experiences, and experiences
of individuals, lie at the roots of the progress of societies,
but when we regard that progress as it appears in history, it
seems to demand the use of words at once less individual and
more objective than the word experiences.

Looking at ideas in another light, we might be disposed to
call them principles. "What doctrine is to the understanding
and inspiration to the heart, that principles are to the will :
rules of action representing the line of contact between in-

8o EXPLORATIO EVANGEL1CA

spiration and active life. And as doctrines enable us to deal
with the ideas in the realm of intelligence, and to put them
on terms with the knowledge which comes by experience, so
do religious principles enable us to direct our conduct in the
course for ever lighted up by the divine light which lighteth
every man which cometh into the world. But to use the word
principles in the place of the word ideas would be obviously
unsuitable ; for not only has that word a somewhat hard and
unsympathetic sound, but also it has in it far too much of the
ego and of personal will. My principles are mine, and their
possession is just the thing which justifies my existence as a
personal being ; but the ideas belong to no man's personality ;
rather the personal will of all into whom they enter is absorbed
by them, and guided apart from self-assertion to the pursuit
of higher and nobler purposes. That the ideas are the prin-
ciples of God's government is true ; but we naturally feel that
it is inappropriate to talk of the principles of the Divine Father.
It would certainly not be felicitous to speak of the divine
ideas as laws. For few words are more ambiguous than the
word law, and few contain deeper swamps of metaphysical
obscurity. By speaking of the laws of God in a sense too
anthropomorphic, people have been led to look upon divine
law as something arbitrary and conventional. And by speak-
ing of the laws of nature, without attaining to a clear concep-
tion of what nature is, men have been involved in the deepest
of absurdities and self-contradictions. But the root-idea of
law is a rule of life prescribed by a higher authority undei
penalties. And in this view the ideas are certainly like laws.
They are set before us, quite apart from our wish and intention,
and it is the worse for us if we do not follow them, and try to
embody them in our conduct and in the world about us. They
appear to us as guiding stars and warning beacons, and woe to
the ship which is steered in disregard of their light On the
other hand, however, the word law is commonly used among
US, especially by the votaries of physical science, to signify
merely the uniformities in the course of nature, uniformities as
to the origin and meaning of which we have no knowledge;
and in this sense law and idea have Little in common, arc in
feet naturally opposed one to the other, since the law is the

THE INSPIRATION OF HISTORY

Bumming of that which is in the world, and the idea is the

essence of that which is not yet in the world, but is in process
of becoming in it.

Perhaps the word forms would lie under still graver objec-
tions, this wind being one of purely metaphysical use, and
standing for a class of subjective laws or necessities, as when
we say that space is a form of perception of the visible and
tangible world, <>r that time is a form of consciousness. But
if we take form as the mere antithesis to matter or contents,
then we reach a notion not unlike that of the ideas, which are
indeed forms in the sense in which the plaster mould taken
from a statue is a form, which will compel any substance
poured into it to take the shape of the statue from contact
with which it has arisen. Thus the ideas too give shape and
direction to human life and will and experience, moulding them
after the patterns according to which themselves are moulded
by the Divine Ruler of the world. They are like the rocks
and hills which determine the course which a river shall take
in its flow from the mountains to the sea, or that more inward
compulsion according to which a tree grows in the shape
dictated by history and nature and not in one chosen by its
own caprice.

Many of the characters of the ideas would be best summed
up in the word tendencies. And this is the word by which
Matthew Arnold, whose eloquence sometimes makes us over-
look his wonderful power of insight, has usually chosen to
designate them. The ideas in their practical working are a
stream of tendency, bearing us towards happiness and righteous-
ness. As the constant stream of electricity compels the needle
to point to the north, so the constant tendency of the ideas is
to hold life in relations with goodness and to keep it in equili-
brium. The ideas are tendencies as being moving powers
within all life and experience, not to be found by any analysis
or investigation, but to be observed in their working and
results ; just as the will and character of a man cannot be
found by dissecting him, but will shine out in his life if we
watch it.

Some writers of a philosophic turn have chosen to speak
of the divine ideas as the realities which underlie the mere

6

EX PL OR A TIO E VA NGELICA

appearances or phenomena of the world. And this way of
speaking is in itself true enough, though it does not accord
with ordinary use of language, or the common everyday way of
looking at things. Philosophy is hardly started on the career
set before her, when she finds, as did the earliest of the Greek
philosophers, that all things are in a flux, in a state oi transi-
tion, and that they are not so solid as they seem. The surface
of the physical universe is very soon seen to be hollow, con-
cealing something which we long to search out, which has
seemed to some an underlying material stratum, and has seemed
to some to be pure thought. And the more cloud-like and
unsubstantial the physical world appears, the more real do
those things appear which lie behind it, the powers and
tendencies which are ever working through and moulding it.
To the man of common sense a fact of physical nature is the
very type of hard and unyielding reality : facts, according to
the proverb, the most stubborn of things. But no man of
ordinary intelligence can set himself to try and find out what
a fact really is, without sliding fast into scepticism, which is
only to be avoided by taking refuge in some idealist or some
materialist scheme of philosophy. And when he has purged
away the natural prejudice which attributes reality to pheno-
mena of the world rather than to aught else, he will be willing
to allow that ideas and tendencies may have a better claim to
reality than what is merely seen and felt. Ideas and tendencies
live below and within what is seen and felt at an intense r
depth of being. It is not merely that they will exist when the
mere outward fact has passed away, but that they already exist
in a true and deep way of their own, as to which every philo-
sopher knows something.

There is an argument in Newman's Development <>f Chris-
tian Doctrine to prove the objectivity of the divine ideas,
which must here be repeated. " In proportion to the variety
of aspects under which (an idea) presents itself to various
minds is its force and depth, and the argument for its reality.
Ordinarily an idea is not brought home to the intellect as
objective except through this variety, like bodily substances,
which are not apprehended except under the clothing of their
properties and results, and which admit of being walked round

THE INSPIRATION OF HISTORY 83

and surveyed on opposite sides, and in different perspectives,
and in contrary lights, in evidence of their reality." This
notion is ingenious, and worthy of a careful consideration.
But we are after all independent of any such arguments. To

prove the objectivity of the subject matter of religion from the
individual and speculative point of view is a very difficult
matter, requiring a careful metaphysical discussion. But to

prove its objectivity from the social point of view is a matter
of no difficulty at all. For in that case the appeal lies not to
metaphysics but to history. And the testimony of history i-
simple, unambiguous, final. The ideas have, as a matter of fact,
wmked themselves into the woof of human history ever since
man began to be, or at all events since he began to be a
religious creature. They have but to be sought out, disentangled,
compared and analysed. They are as undeniably real and
objective as Eoman Law or the English Constitution.

If we have now partially seen what the divine ideas are
not, it should be easier for us, at least in part, to discern what
they are. They are the underlying norms according to which
God has been from the dawn of history moulding human
society, and creating a moral world, with the help of all men
who deserve to be called good, and in face of the opposition
of all powers of evil, both human and pneterhuman. They are
the thoughts which, when they pass out of the store-houses of
possibility and become visible in men and in societies, are
seen to be good. They cause the upward swervings of the line
of human progress, that strange irregular line which is always
fluctuating, but which in God's good providence has on the whole
moved upwards. They are the originals in heaven which
become the parents of innumerable imitative types on earth :
types faded, imperfect, one-sided, yet having in them after all
something divine, so that they kindle our hearts and stimulate
our wills whether we choose or not : types finding flesh in a
few men and a few women of each generation, whose light
shines in all eyes, and whose example passes not away.

As regards human nature, then, the ideas are reflected in
the highest points of perfection in successive ages. And
excellence being in man a practical thing, the divine ideas are
mostly made known to men on their practical side. "We see

84 EXPLORATIO EVANGELICA

them working, tending, striving ; here moulding a character into
the utmost beauty of mural sweetness, there inspiring a hero to
suffer and to die for their sake and the sake of the world ; here
again informing and organising a society whose mutual rela-
tions are based on an appreciation of an idea, there again
stimulating a great enterprise which is destined to raise the
whole level of life in a country or a district. We see them
giving fervour to the poet, inspiration to the prophet, untiring
energy to the reformer, a noble intention to the patriot states-
man. AVe see them breaking the fetters of the slave, raising
the condition of the working masses of mankind and the tone
of the higher society, improving the position of women, check-
ing the prevalence of vices but too natural to imperfect human
nature, and giving every one who cares to live for better things
something better to live for.

But though mainly practical, since conduct is the main
end of man, the divine ideas are not confined to what is
practical. They work also in the regions of feeling and of
thought. By them the noblest poems are inspired, and in their
light the great plastic arts, architecture, sculpture, painting,
find their best meaning and their highest mission. Music is
their devoted servant, and stirs the hearts of the noblest to
battle on their behalf. They sit enshrined in our cathedrals,
and stand revealed in our services of prayer and song. And
not less do they visit the thinker also, the man who offers in the
service of God not his blood or his life, but his brain and his
nerves, which are slowly eaten out by wearing thought. To
him they form the corner-stones of intellectual systems ; they
give unity to history and meaning to human existence. Their
aggressive power moulds the results of experience and the
arguments of wisdom, and throws into a new light all that
men have done and suffered, and felt, and thought. And the
torch thus lit at the fires of thought is passed back again into
the world of practical life, so that the good feel that not only
goodness calls them, but wisdom also sanctions the call; until
al certain periods of the world's history, thought and feeling
and action seem to move like the Graces, hand in hand, to the
music of a heavenly inspiration.

It would be a noble task to trace the ideas in their working

THE INSPIRA /'/< hV OF ff/ST( )RY 85

in all the fields of human activity, to observe aot only how
they make terms with the intellect and so produce doctrine,
but how they inspire the various arts, architecture, painting,
music, and poetry; how they crystallise into custom, and how
they mould and organise the outward form of Bociety. But
obviously all this could not he done in a single hook. In the
main, therefore, I propose to confine my investigations to tin-
intellectual and doctrinal aspect of the working of ideas.

CHAPTER VIII

THE TEST OF IDEAS

In saying that human progress is caused by divine ideas, and
that ideas which lead states and communities to what is better
are divine, we would not preach unreasoning optimism. It is
quite certain that the medal has a reverse. As in the lives
of individuals, so in history, the underlying ideas are not
all admirable. In the tendencies of nations, as in the im-
pulses of persons, evil is mixed with good. As a community
may rise to what is better, so it may sink to what is worse,
and pursue courses which lead to barrenness and disaster.
And again, ideas may for a time be a raising power, but only
for a time, and become outworn, or unfit for adoption under
varied circumstances. Thus we require, as in daily life, so in
dealing with history, some test of ideas, whereby we may dis-
cern between the evil and the good. We want if possible to
discover how they may be divided into three classes : first,
those which are good always ; second, those which are good
but of temporary value only; third, those which are false and
misleading.

The first and most obvious test of ideas is suggested by
the study of biology, and may be imported from that study
into the field of historic observation. It is the well-known
test of survival of the fittest, familiar since Darwin to all. As
in the field of animal and vegetable life, so in the field of
national life there is a continual struggle for existence. I do
not mean the mere struggle of nation with nation, but the
competition in the field of humanity of idea with idea. Some

THE TEST OF IDEAS 87

ideas are aoon crushed out of existence, because the customs
ami beliefs in which they embody themselves are unfitted to
our surroundings. Some ideas, and indeed most of them, have
vogue for awhile and form the visible life of nations, but after
a while lose their power and influence, so that all which arose
out of them decays. Some ideas, again, seem to have roots in
what is permanent in human nature, and persist from age to
age, taking a uew and more Buitable form when that in which
they had first appeared is outworn.

An idea which cannot maintain itself in the world must be
regarded as rejected by nature, though at the same time it
may be doubtful if in some cases it may not be too good,
rather than too bad, for our imperfect nature and surroundings.
An idea which is persistent, and constantly reappears in history,
i- almost certain to be worthy, or at least to contain elements
important to mankind. hetween the class which nature
rejects and that which she stamps with approval is a large
variety which must be more closely considered. We must
apply first the biological test, that of survival; and then the
test of fruits, though neither of these tests can be applied
witli the same objective rigour as a mechanical or chemical
test.

The purely biological test, that of survival, is far more
easily used in a negative than in a positive fashion. It is
far easier to detect by its aid such ideas as are unfit for our
surroundings, than to select such as are entirely justified by
success in the world. It is obvious that if an idea brings to
an end the society which adopts it, it is condemned. Tribes
which live by rapine and aggression are destroyed whenever
orderly government reaches their borders. The religion of the
Thugs could not survive when India became subject to western
civilisation. Polygamy cannot maintain itself in contact with
monogamy, and thus if polygamy had been indissolubly united
with the ideas of Mormonism, the Mormon community would
probably before this have come to an end. The beliefs of the
Jews of the first century of our era led by a natural process to
the Roman destruction of Jerusalem.

But, like all tests, that of survival cannot be used in a
merely mechanical fashion. It is of societies, not of the

EXP LOR A TIO E V ANGELIC A

individuals composing them, nor even of corporations within
them, that we are speaking. The monastic idea, for example,
by prohibiting marriage, naturally brought to an end the
institutions founded upon it, if those institutions be regarded
as consisting of individuals. It could only continue by per-
petually preying on the community and carrying away fresh
converts for its own purposes. Yet the monastic idea was
singularly lasting, and indeed in our own days seems on many
sides to be rather reviving than decaying. The natural and
obvious supposition is that though it drained in same respects
the forces of the community, yet it in other ways increased
those forces, and in some way or other redressed the balance of
its account with society. The Buddhist priests in the East
and such societies in the "West as that of the early Franciscans
not only lived, in the fashion of parasites, on the fresh blood of
the community, but also, being entirely dependent for food
upon mendicancy, drained its material resources. Yet these
societies do not thus stand ipso facto condemned, unless it be
shown that they did not in return for food and shelter give
something which tended to the higher life of society. If they
did this, they may have furthered the vitality of the community
at the cost of individual loss, and so may take a high rank
among human institutions.

It is easier to condemn ideas which are destructive of
human society than to select for approbation such as necessarily
tend to the good of that society. We certainly cannot say
that all ethical and religious ideas which have long endured
among men are therefore justified. This would be to give up
altogether the ideal character of the good, and to fall into the
cpiagmire of indifference. It would be not impartiality but
absence of colour and meaning. It would be confusion of
what Mr. Alexander1 calls the formally good with the
materially good.

If two antagonistic ideas are alike permanent, it is evident
that from the mere biological point of view they are equally
justified. And in order to choose between them we shall
require a test not merely mechanical, but involving the notions
of good and evil. To take a simple instance, it i- evident that

1 Moral Order and Progress, p. 812.

THE TEST OF IDEAS 89

the ideas on which Chinese society and institutions are based
have been, to judge by the facts of history, at least as perma-
nent and steady as those upon which either the Teutonic or
Latin races founded themselves. No one, in trying to convert
a Chinaman to the Christian religion, could use in its bare
form the historical argument, " Your ideas have uot been suited
for survival in the world, whereas ours have." It would ln-
necessary to induce him to accept or believe in some other
standard than that set up by mere history and nature, before
there could be any hope of gaining him over to a perception of
the inferiority of the ideas of his race.

And this instance will show the insufficiency, from a
historical point of view, of that test which Newman regarded as
final in matters of belief, his " Securus judicat orbis terrarum,"
the infallibility of universal consent. Universal consent may
be infallible, but what religious ideas can claim it ? The
( 'hinese are supposed to be nearly a third of the human race ;
and to which of our ideas would they give a general assent ?
The fact is, that by orbis terrarwn Xewman meant the
Christian Church, which is and always has been but a part, never
the greater part, of the human race. And in fact he meant
something much narrower than the Universal Church, even in
the writings of his Anglican days, for he interpreted the phrase
" Christian Church " in quite a narrow' and conventional way,
excluding from it those who did not bear certain arbitrary
marks which he deemed essential.

There is just a substratum of truth to this notion of the
infallibility of universal consent which is well worth observing.
All those who regard history as governed by law, must allow
that an idea cannot prevail in the struggle for survival unless
it possess some advantages in meeting definite needs and in
being suited to human surroundings. That is to say, an idea
cannot succeed unless it has merit of a kind. And those
who regard history as providentially controlled will be very
unwilling to consider an ultimately victorious idea as tending
on the whole to evil. Our knowledge of the facts of history
is so imperfect, and our perception of the interactions of beliefs
and acts so dull, that it may well seem wiser for those who
are studying past history to assume that any great change in

go EXPLORATIO EVANGELICA

society was on the whole good, or led on the whole to good,
rather than to praise or condemn it in the light of personal
conviction.

Such is the biological tendency which naturally works in
the scientific historian. But if it is carried to an excessive
length it is fatal. If the historian comes to regard all victori-
ous movements as good, and history as a continuous progress
in the right direction, he must, in setting aside all bias, give
up his human character.

It is less easy to deal with another class of ideas, which
are not permanent, and yet which must be allowed to have
been for a time good and valuable to humanity. "We here reach
another aspect of the great law of illusion, one of the widest
reaching and most remarkable of all human phenomena. It is
the fact, however we may prefer to explain it, that many of the
movements which have done most for the life of the human
race have been closely associated with or dependent on beliefs
which no one now would regard as true. We have here
illusions taking the place of divine inspiration, and working
with no less efficacy for the salvation of men.

Ideas of this character subserve a temporary need, and
leave society the better for their prevalence. Their existence
is a proof how dangerous is the application in these matters of
any hard external test. We are driven in the end to consider
the nature of good and of evil besides mere duration, though
the fact of duration furnishes a first and rough criterion.
We can only say, if our study of ideas is made with a view
to conduct, that we may regard the impermanence of ideas
in the past as a 'prima facie reason against following them
in the present.

As an individual every man must judge of fruits in the
light of his own feelings and necessities, not unaided by the
light which lights every man who comes into the world. But
a man is not an individual merely. lie is a member of society
and a link in a chain stretching from the unmeasured past into
the remote future, a moment in the development not of mankind
merely, but of a particular race and a definite family. And he
comes to all questions of conduct and the ideal with a strong
;iinl definite bias, of which lie can no more rid himself than he

THE TEST OF IDEAS Q]

ran of the colour of bis eyes, or the form of his limbs. Jusl
as a healthily constituted white man will turn away with
disgust from the Beductiona of a Hottentot Venus, bo will each

(if us in history turn away from certain ideas, ami be attracted
by "thurs which awake, without the interference of the will, all
that is best in our natures.

E en in the case of individual religious beliefs the test of
fruits is sound and legitimate, as well as far easier to apply,
when we are considering the beliefs of communities ami the
fruits which they hear in the history and actions of those
communities. For in societies we see fruits appealing in a
more obvious and visible form; the subjective element is less,
and the objective element stronger and more prominent. .And
if we possess accounts of the history of a society or a movement,
extending not over a short time only, but over a series of

rations, the innate powers of the ideas which it embodies
and mi which it is founded must needs come out more and
more clearly, the disturbing influence of the personal character
of the founders and directors sinking more and more into the
background. It has been observed by the advocates of
Utilitarian Ethics that the test on which they rely is far easier
and safer in its application to countries and to masses of
nun than to individuals : and this must hold true of all such
outward and visible tests.

It may be thought that historical bias bears a painful
likeness to mere prejudice, and that we are defending the mere
} ^repossessions which every man is bound to lay aside at
the call of reason. We do hold, emphatically and without
hesitation, that the man who would be free from all historical
bias, and look at all practical questions in a perfectly wdiite
light, would be no man at all but a wretched pulseless creature,
without heart and without backbone. The European who
could weigh in a calm and equal balance the views of the Turks
on marriage, or the views of the Chinese as to cleanness, would
deserve to be converted to those views. There are many
questions which it is unhealthy to discuss, and in which
hesitation is not merely weak, but degrading and contemptible.
But the word prejudice should be applied only to judgments
warped by selfishness, by laziness, or by cowardice. It is Mill's

92 EXPL0RAT10 EVANGELIC A

" because I am I " which is the false element in judgment. We
have no right to think that we must be right, merely because
we are ourselves. But we have a right to stand by ideas which
have led our ancestors for generations to virtue and success ;
and we have a right to stand by ideas which have worked well
in our own lives.

It is a natural conceit in man to suppose that by mere
reasoning power he can learn what it is best to feel, and what
it is right to do. And it is also a natural conceit to suppose
that mere reasoning will lead him to right views in regard to
the history of the human race. Every one has a natural
prejudice to the effect that he is free from prejudice ; that he
sees things in a white light ; and that others only differ from
him because they are unreasonable. "We are very fond of
looking on ourselves as the embodied spirit of sense and truth.
But the real fact is contained in a statement made in a previous
chapter, that man's intellect was given him in the main,
not that he should reach the heights of abstract knowledge,
but that he should be able to see his way in life. We have
light enough to walk by ; and more would tend rather to
ilatter our vanity than to help us to be what we are intended
to be in the world, useful citizens and upright men. We have
enough light from heaven to enable us to discover what are
good and what are evil impulses in life for ourselves, but not
enough to enable us to discern the whole plan and scheme of
the universe.

It is at once evident that history, if read in the light of a
formed ethical standard, will furnish a test of the comparative
goodness of ideas. The historian will show what ideas have
led the societies of which he writes to what he thinks virtue
and happiness, and what ideas have dragged them down into
vice and misery. If he is dealing with foreign races or with
remote ages there will be less of this practical element, his bin-
will be less strong, his light whiter, and as a consequence he
will be less didactic and less interesting. But if he deals with
his own country, or with any society in nearly the same stage
and condition as his own country, he must, needs assume ideals
and paint with a purpose. And in proportion as he does so,
he will become an ethical teacher, and by showing the history

THE TEST OF IDEAS 93

and consequences of the acceptance of ideas in the past,
will also show which are most worthy of acceptance in the
present.

1 1 is difficult t<> express the dignity ami value which
accrue to history when it is seen that she is a legitimate, ami,
within certain limits, trustworthy guide in the matter of religious
beliefs. The existence of these limits must indeed never be
forgotten ; and in regard to them we shall have much to say
hereafter; but at present we may regard the efficiency rather
than the limitation. The study of nature, animate and
inanimate, has in our time wonderfully advanced in nobility,
and in fact acquired almost a religious character, because
discovery has been made in that field of some of the marvellous
root-principles which rule in the creation of the world. But the
study of history has in consequence somewhat lost ground, and
has often been spoken of as if it were the investigation of mere
" human lies," as opposed to the divine truth of nature. Yet
in proportion to the greater importance to all of us of conduct
as compared to mere material surroundings is the greater
dignity of history compared to that of chemistry and physics, or
even biology. In the last century a poet wrote, " The proper
study of mankind is man," and perhaps the next century will
return to that view as the truest.

CHAPTER IX

IDEA AND MYTH

We may compare the divine ideas, in their unembodied state,
to the souls which were supposed by ancient writers to be
waiting in Hades until a body was prepared for them to
inhabit.

It is difficult to find a single word which will well express
the embodiments of the ideas. They have to find a material
tenement, and, in so doing, to lose their spiritual bright-
ness. And, beyond this, any expression which they may
find belongs to a particular age and race, and distorts them in
a mirror of which the surface is never smooth. So a perfect
rendering of them under the forms of time and space cannot be
hoped for.

In some schools the term symhol is regarded as the best to
express the human rendering of the ideas. This word has the
advantage of comprehensiveness. It can stand for almost any
imperfect rendering of an idea. M. Sabatier has used it very
effectively in his philosophy of religion.1 And there is this ele-
ment of symbolism, of implying and suggesting more than is
actually stated, in myths, in temples and statues, in creeds and
doctrines, in every expression of religious experience and impulse.
However, 1 have written these pages without adopting the
language of the symbolical philosophy, preferring to be as clear
and definite as possible, whereas the Language of the symbolists
tends somewhat to the indefinite.

The ideas can enter into the thought of the visible world
1 Est i Hi:,:,, ,1'nin "Philosophic dt in Religion, A Sabatier.

IDEA AND MYTH 95

in more ways than one, according to the nature of the peoples
and societies with which they come in contact. Among races
which are in intellect on the Level of children they very
commonly find their first embodiment in the form of myths.
At a more advanced stage of intellectual growth they take the
form of systems of doctrine. And as all peoples are apt in
their ways of acting to acquire and to preserve habits, ideas
may very commonly be found at the root of custom and
ceremony. Among societies which have a tendency towards
plastic or pictorial art, they enter into and inform that art ;
and in societies which have a faculty for organisation they
control the processes of organisation, and shape its results.

"We have compared the course of history to the growth of
a tret;, and the ideas to the sap which rises in it. So long as
a tree is living its growth is methodical and continuous. A tree
does not one year put out a branch, and the next year a new
branch to supersede and choke it. It may indeed happen even
to a strong and living tree that some branch may be, from ex-
ternal or internal causes, atrophied, and may become stunted or
decayed. But this is the exception ; while regular progress is
the rule. So if we regard history, we see that nations or churches
have sometimes started in an unfruitful direction or relapsed
to a lower level. But usually their motion has been fairly
continuous. And when we can trace a great ethical idea
through ages it is in the last degree unlikely that it can be
intended to dry up or disappear with the further progress of
mankind. New forms and developments it is likely to take,
but certainly not to pass away.

The sap of a tree is essential to the life of the tree, but
it becomes visible, not as it is in itself, but in various outward
forms. It may take the form of wood, or it may appear as
leaves, or it may turn into bud and ilower and fruit. In the
same way, ideas may take many forms ; and which of them
will have the preference depends no doubt on the circum-
stances of the surrounding society. We see the result, but
the law is too deep to be traced.

Among the ancient Egyptians, religious ideas were specially
manifested in the form of ritual and art ; among the Greeks, in
myth and art and philosophy; among the Jews, in ritual and

96 EX PL OR A TIO E VA NGELICA

poetry and the laws of conduct ; among the Komans, in the
organisation of society. He who should endeavour to write a
history of the various manifestations which they have taken in
different countries and at different ages, wrould have to write a
work of colossal size, a work for which the faculties of no one
man would suffice. Perhaps by degrees this history will in time
get itself written. But it is necessary that we should fence
in, for the purposes of this work, a small part of so vast a
field. I propose, therefore, to speak not of art nor of custom
nor organisation, but only of the intellectual rendering of the
divine ideas, and of that but in small part.

The expression of these in intellectual form takes place
along two roads, whereof one is especially in use in earlier, the
other in later days. There is among all nations a mythopoeic
period, when the nascent ideas are naturally embodied in tales
told of god and hero. And with the myth go naturally the
arts of sculpture and painting, which are so admirably adapted
to the representation of tales. When the mythopoeic age passes
away, it is succeeded by a doctrinal age, when men try to
express the idea not in tales but in propositions and systems
of thought. Then the plastic arts give way to those vaguer
and more emotional arts which can give better expression to
deep thought and lofty aspiration, architecture and music.
We must briefly treat first of the mythopoeic, and next of the
doctrinal age. It would, however, be going much too far if
we made the ages of myth and the ages of doctrine successive
and mutually exclusive. Doctrine, in fact, begins in a rudi-
mentary fashion as soon as man begins to reflect on spiritual
experience. But in early times doctrine is overlaid with
myth and constantly based upon it ; whereas in later times
it is based rather upon history, upon reasoning, and upon
experience.

When we inquire among civilised or semi-civilised races
fur the reasons of their religious practices or beliefs, the answer
usually takes the form of a myth.1 The myth has two main
characteristics. First, that it has for hero or subject some
being endowed with human attributes. Whether it be a god

1 The following paragraphs are from a paper read before the Society of His-
toi i;il Theology ai I »xford in ( ictober 1895.

IDEA AND MYTH 97

made in the likeness of man, a human being, an animal, or
even some -tone or tree, for the time it becomes in the story
human, of like passions and desires with him who tells the
tale. The second great characteristic of the myth is its inde-
finiteness. It is always in the aorist tense. Often myths
begin with the exordium, "Once on a time." Their relation to
time i> usually of the vaguest. Their independence of space
i- less marked, since the tale is usually told of some particular
(.hue. But then exactly the same tale is told of a number of
different places. The myth is also above the rules of logic.
It is often not at the trouble to be consistent with itself.
And mutually inconsistent tales in regard to the same deity or
personality might perfectly well circulate together without
collision. The myth is also usually independent of any
observed fact or law of nature. The animal talks, the stone
walks, man Hies, and the gods take any form which it pleases
them to assume. Thus the myth is independent of time and
of space, and under no subjection to the rules of logic and
consistency and the laws of nature.

This being the case, it is clear that there is a bottomless
gulf between the myth and what in these days we call
history, which aims at narrating what really took place at a
definite time and place, and which strictly conforms to the
laws of consistency and those of nature. And yet, perhaps,
the myth may have its origin in the search for truth ; only
the notion of truth among those who invent or repeat myths
must be very different from that of the educated modern
world. But the modern notion of historic truth is very recent,
and really confined to very few, and we may expect to find, in
the course of its slow evolution, other ideas of truth as differ-
ent from ours as the lizard is unlike the man.

Myths must have risen out of widely felt human needs.
This indeed is almost a truism. And the same human needs
which caused their birth, determined also which of them should
die out and which should survive. They were repeated from
mouth to mouth ; they ran their course in a district or a
country, and a process of natural selection determined which
should survive and which should fade and perish. They were
accepted, not because they were true, at least in the historical

7

98 EX PL ORA TIO E VANGELICA

sense of the word true, but because they were useful, because
they increased the happiness or the efficacy of men. Or they
died, because they lost their usefulness, and became mere
lumber of the mind. But very often, no doubt, they survived
after they had ceased to be beneficial, because they were arti-
ficially embalmed or preserved in sacred custom, in ritual, or
in poem.

What, then, is the wide human need whence myth arose ?
It seems to me that the myth is the result of a primitive
attempt to give a reason, an explanation, or a justification of
some actually existing fact. The adjective which may best be
applied to it is serological. ^Etiological in some sense or
other are, as I think, all myths ; though the first half of that
word must be used in at least as many senses as is causa by
the schoolmen.

When the wakening intellect of early man begins to apply
itself to the facts of its environment, he naturally desires some
explanation of them, and just as naturally he begins by
explaining that which is without by that which is within.
Attributing to the powers of the world, wind and rain, sun and
stars, rivers, trees, and animals, feelings and purposes not
unlike his own, he learns to regard the nature around him as
a result of the love and hatred, the lust and jealousy, the kind-
ness and philanthropy of beings seen or unseen, of daemons and
men, animals and plants, or the personified powers of nature.

Out of this mental state springs, on one side, by a process
which has not yet been measured or explained, the strange
system called totemism, and out of totemism the rudiments of
religion and of social order. Out of it, on another side, comes
the construction of myths, a process which goes on broadening
and deepening during many ages, till we find, in countries
which have an artistic genius, both poetry and the mimetic
arts springing up on a mythologic foundation. Regarding
these processes without reverence or imagination, in the light
of mere cause and effect, we shall see in them the course
of natural evolution. Regarding them with reverence and
imagination, in the light of conduct and conscience, we shall
rather see in them a progressive revelation given by God to
man.

IDEA AND MYTH 99

I must endeavour to apply in a more concrete fashion the
serological method of explanation to myths of various classes.

I hold these eliisses to be mainly two. First, we have physical
myths, or the myths of external nature. Second, we have
myths which relate to custom, whether social or religious.

1. Of these, physical myths are probably the most attrac-
tive class. It is these which have been the subject of the
most frequent discussion, and which have given rise to the
most brilliant theories. They may again be divided into the
two classes of meteorologic and geographic. In every case they
seem to take their rise in an observed fact, and to find their
end in an explanation of the fact, reasonable according to the
notion of the reasonable prevalent at the time. Simple in-
stances of meteorologic myth are the tales which connect one
constellation known to the Greeks with Orion the hunter;
another with the nymph Callisto, who was turned into the
Great Bear; another with Ariadne, whose wreath was seen in
the sky. There is a mock myth, made on the model of these
at a later time, which connected a set of stars with the hair
of the Egyptian Queen, Berenice, shorn in consequence of a
vow for her husband's safety. I call this a mock myth,
because it has the form of a myth without any real underlying
belief. It was the invention of courtiers and poets ; and
though it is always very hard to say where belief ends and
poetry (which is the ghost of belief) begins, yet this myth is
certainly poetical and shadowy. The nature of the real myths
of the class is easily traced. The constellations I have named
had, or were supposed to have, a definite form. For that form
there must be some reason; and any reason which was pro-
posed had a fair chance of being accepted so long as it did not
make too great demand on credulity : that is, presupposed in
the sky ways of action which did not seem reasonable. To
those who propounded those myths there seemed nothing un-
reasonable in transferring a nymph or giant to the sky : while
such an account of the constellations as our astronomers give
would seem contrary to common sense.

Next, we will take a geographic myth. Earthquakes were
in Greece sometimes regarded as the result of a blow of
Poseidon's trident. And quite naturally. So great a motion

57S95G A

EXPLORA TIO E VA NGELICA

of the earth must be due to the volition of some powerful
being; and Poseidon is the embodied power of the sea, which
dashes in huge waves on the shore, rending the rocks and
hurling them on to the land. Others, however, thought that
earthquakes were more often caused by the turning under the
earth of the giants there buried and overwhelmed by the gods
in the great primitive conflict between the powers of light
and darkness. This was about as good an explanation as the
other ; and though the two explanations were inconsistent, it
was not necessary to choose between them ; they could quite
well stand side by side. But to suppose that the cause of
earthquakes was some mere working of subterranean fires,
however much liked by the physicist, would seem to many both
presumptuous and atheistic.

II. The second class of myths, those which explain some
custom of social or religious life, was in Greece peculiarly
abundant. Wherever Pausanias the traveller went in Greece,
he found rites of difficult explanation in the possession of the
temples ; and wherever the cult is peculiar there is some local
legend to justify it. Sometimes Pausanias says that the legend
is too sacred to be told, by which he occasionally means that it
is of so unpleasant a character that it must not be exposed to
vulgar misrepresentation. But sometimes he repeats it. For
example, at Patras there was a chest, too sacred to open, but
supposed to contain a statue of Dionysus. Such vessels with
mysterious contents are known among all peoples. But the
Greeks must needs in this case enforce the sacredness by
telling a story that Eurypylus, a legendary hero, had once
dared to open the chest, and had been struck with insanity ;
and by another story, quite inconsistent with the first, that
its arrival at Patrae had stayed a sanguinary old custom of
human sacrifice. At Lycosura, in Arcadia, the worship of the
earth-goddess, 1 )emeter or Persephone, had strangely become
attached to a barbarous image which combined the body of a
woman with the head of a horse. Such forms find readier
parallels in Egypt than in Greece; and to explain so strange
a representation the people had a myth, telling how Demeter
had once, to escape the persecution of Poseidon, taken refuge
in the form of a mare. Whether, in this case, the myth

IDEA AND MYTH

sprang directly out of the form of the Image, or whether image
ami tale alike sprang out of the cultus of a local deity, it is
not easy to say.

There has been no better or more complete explanation of
a myth mi setiological method than that set forth by Mr.
Jevona in his analysis of the Eleusinian Hymn to Demeter.
The plot of that hymn I need not repeat : it is familiar to all

ilars, and may be found in any work on Greek mythology.
Mr. Jevons shows how the grafting of the story of Demeter
and Persephone on the cultus of the corn -mother or old
woman of Eleusis might have taken place. A point that
required explanation "was that whereas Demeter certainly
dwelt with the other gods and goddesses in Olympus, the Old
Woman of Eleusis equally certainly dwelt, for part of the year,
in the house in the head-man of the village of Eleusis, and was
actually seen there once a year by the whole body of wor-
shippers. There was, of course, no difficulty in imagining that
Demeter did actually descend from Olympus and dwell for a
time in Eleusis, and that she appeared in the guise of an old
woman." "But Demeter must have had some motive for
thus withdrawing herself from Olympus and seeking a home in
the abodes of men." " It obviously was because she had some
cause of quarrel with them. Equally plain was it that the
quarrel had some reference to her daughter the Corn-Maiden,
for the time at which Demeter appeared at Eleusis in the
disguise of an old woman was the time during which the young
corn was below ground : when the green blade at length shot
up, the old woman was no longer seen in Eleusis; she returned
to Olympus. In other words, Demeter's wrath terminated
with her daughter's re-appearance on the shores of light."

All the details of the story of the Homeric Hymn,
Demeter's wandering with torches, her refusal to drink wine,
her holding of the young Demophon in the fire, her drinking
of the sacred draught, may be readily explained from the
precedure at the Eleusinian festival, which was in its turn a
survival of the primitive customs of agrarian religious festivals.
For example, the mysta; wandered about with torches. This
was really a survival of a primitive lustration by fire of the
1 Introduction >>< the History of Religion, p. 377.

EX PL OR A TIO E VA NGELICA

cornlands. But that origin was forgotten. And in the place
of it the people of Elensis received (we can scarcely say
invented) a myth that it was in such wanderings that Demeter
had of old sought her daughter. Therefore the votaries of the
goddess must follow the example of their mistress and have a
share in her passion. The cultus survived from age to age,
hut in each succeeding age it gave birth to new explanations,
marking the change of religious feeling which had come over
the people.

It results naturally from the way in which myth arises
directly out of feeling and experience that it does not in any
country form a compact and consistent whole. We may readily
see this if we examine the mythology most familiar to us, that
of Greece. Poets and logographers did much to build into a
regular construction the tales told by the priests of the gods.
But poets and logographers worked on the myths when they
were no longer living and growing, when they were dried
wood which could be cut about and fitted together. The
further back we penetrate into the history of myths the more
vague and fluctuating do they appear. Tales utterly incon-
sistent one with the other flourished side by side and gained
general credit. If we follow the steps of Pausanias the
traveller in his journey through Greece, we shall find in every
sacred place a series of tales in regard to the indwelling deity
which the priests preserved, undisturbed by their inconsistency
with tales told of the same deity at neighbouring shrines, or
embodied in well known poems.1 The tales told of Apollo at
Delos were originally quite of another cast from those told of
the same deity at Delphi ; and at Athens a third set of myths
prevailed. At the centres of civilisation like Athens and
Olympia, where men reflected, the schools of priests felt bound
to reduce the chaos to order, and formed schemes or colleges
of greater deities with defined functions. But in the scattered
shrines the chaos remained till the fall of paganism.

Tin; special variety of these human myths with which I
propose to deal is the ethical. Ethical myths are scarce in
the legendary lore of Greece: a fact which is in many ways

1 I'm- further details see Gardner and Jevone, .1 Manual of Greek Antiquities,

1>. 34.

IDEA AND MYTH 103

gestiva And probably for thai reason they have been in
comparison little spoken of in the great works which deal with
mythology on the anthropological side, works such as those of
Messrs. Tylor and Fraser and Andrew Lang. They arise no!
out of the facts of the natural world, bul out of the faci
conduct ; and they often give in the form of a tale the reason
of some change in morality, the true origin of which lies deep
in the nature of human progress.

Ethical myths are on the whole the latest in their origin,
often the leasl barbarous. For such reasons they may be less
attractive to the anthropologist But from the point of view
of religious history and development they are by far the most
interesting of all, and it is they which now form our special
subject of investigation.

Myths, as we have seen, do not give the scientific reason
of farts, but they give an explanation of them suitable to the
intelligence of a non-intellectual mythopoeic age. We must
observe this in case of ethical myths. Let us begin with one
from Greece.

A crime to which the Greek conscience wTas peculiarly
sensitive was presumption in the presence of the gods. In
the experience of the race such presumption usually met with
punishment swift and condign. We have many reflections of
this conviction in myth, one of the best known of which tells
us how the queenly Xiobe, mother of seven noble sons and
seven fair daughters, incurred by her boasting and arrogance
tlie wrath of Latona, and how all the beauteous children were
shot down by the cruel arrows of the twins of Latona, Apollo
and Artemis. It is often supposed that the myth of the
destruction of the Xiobidae is in its origin physical, deriving
from Asia Minor, and that the children who are slain by the
shafts of Apollo are the streams of Mount Sipylus, which run
in the spring but are dried up by the heat of summer.
Whether this be the case or not matters little to the present
purpose. The idea that disrespect to the gods brings nemesis
may have formed a new legend or put meaning into an old
legend ; the essential thing is to observe the working of its
creative or assimilating power.

One of the most decided steps which a nation can take in

io4 EX PLO RATIO EVANGELICA

the upward march of civilisation is taken when it first learns
to substitute in such sacrifices as demand the life of man a
mere animal for a human victim. In the age of the Antouines
Pausanias found that in Greece human sacrifices were not
altogether extinct, but that at most of the sites at which they
had once existed they had been in some way commuted for an
offering of a less repulsive kind. In most cases the substitu-
tion was justified by an oracle or by a myth. One of the
most familiar of Greek myths records such a commutation.
When the Greek fleet was about to sail from Aulis for the
siege of Troy, it was held back by contrary winds, and it
became known that these winds expressed the hostility of
Artemis, who could only be pacified by the offering in sacrifice
of Iphigenia, the fair daughter of Agamemnon. With profound
sorrow the chief agreed to give up his child ; but when at the
altar the prist Calchas raised the knife to slay her, the goddess
herself intervened, and bearing the girl away put in her place
a stag or doe.

This is certainly a myth of ethical progress. Yet like
most myths of the class in Greece, it presents to us the gods
in anything but an amiable light. Artemis bears away the
child to be her slave and priestess in a distant temple, showing
mere selfishness, as in the story of the Niobidse she had shown
mere anger and revenge.

To find ethical myths which bear a nobler impress we
must turn from the mythology of Greece to that of other
countries, where a more severe popular ideal of conduct had
reflected upon the accepted deities a nobler and sterner
morality.

It is in the mythological tales of the Jews that we may
best trace moral basis. Perhaps it is necessary to apologise
for thus bluntly speaking of some of the tales of the early
heroes of the Jewish race as mythological. For there are
many among us who regard them as historical, and indeed as
more trustworthy than profane history. This feeling may
deserve respect, but it is based on a confusion of ideas, and
want of historical training. There may or may not be :i historical
basis to many of the tales told in Genesis of the early patri-
archs of Israel. But in fact to the recorders of those tales

IDEA AXP MYTH 10:

their historical truth or falsehood was by do means a mal
of the greatest concern. When men are at the mythopoeic
stage they very imperfectly appreciate the difference between
what is historic fact and what lias mere ethical appropriate-
ness. If the distinction were pointed out to them they would
not value it. Our modern passion for fact is the result of
centuries of training in the methods of physical science, and it
would be hard indeed to expect it in remote antiquity, and in
people who had no such training. This is indeed recognised
by able writers of all parties. Mr. (lore, for example, in Lux
Mwndi, writes, "Are not the earlier narratives" of Jewish
history "before the call of Abraham of the nature of a myth,
in which we cannot distinguish the historical germ, though we
do not at all deny that it exists ? "

If we compare then a Greek ethical myth with a Jewish,
the moral tone of the latter will be found decidedly superior.
I have already cited the myth of Iphigenia as one among
many which explain the substitution of animals for human
victims in piacular sacrifice. A parallel Jewish myth is that
of the offering of Isaac. It is not easy for modern Christians
to read the account of it in Genesis without importing into that
account much of the deeper meaning later introduced into it
by Jewish and Christian commentators. But at least the tale
records a supreme devotion to a God, recognised as a God of
righteousness and as a God of mercy. The dedication of Isaac
led, not like the dedication of Iphigenia, to his segregation from
the world as a temple-slave, but to his consecration as founder
of a race destined to carry on during all future time the torch
of righteousness and monotheism. The Phoenician kinsmen
of the Jews retained down to quite late times the terrible
custom of human sacrifice. Its abolition very early among
the Hebrew's was a mark of their unique religious conscious-
ness, and a sign of their lofty destiny. And something of this
destiny is reflected in the myths in which they embody the
facts of their religious life.

Another Jewish ethical myth is to be found in the verse
of Genesis which records how the Creator of the world rested
on the seventh day from the labour of creation. No one in
our time would suppose that we have here a statement of his-

io6 EX PLO RATIO EVANGELIC A

toric fact. We have a myth which arose directly out of a
human need. That a periodic rest is necessary to man is
allowed by all, whether materialists or spiritualists. And that
times must be set aside for divine worship is recognised by all
religious leaders. The racial consciousness of the Jews,
strongly grasping these human needs, found for them a remedy
in the Sabbath, and for the Sabbath a justification in the myth
of the resting Creator.

The growth and spread of myth may be regarded in various .
lights. From the point of view of pure naturalism myths
may be regarded as a sort of flower of the tree of human
progress, which develops through the struggle for life and the
survival of the fittest. We may look on the myths of the
nations with their indefinite forms and their constant changes
as we look at the purposeless successions of device in a
kaleidoscope. Or from another point of view, that which
believes in the penetration and control of human history by
divine elements, we may regard myths, and especially that
class of them which is ethical, as a progressive reflection in
tale, in the land of imagination and feeling, of the ideas of the
Maker and Uuler of the world. In my opinion we should
combine both views. That which seen from without with eyes
void of imagination seems a merely natural progress, seems
when looked at in another light, the light of conduct and of
faith, to be a process of quite another kind, full of divine
influence, and leading up to purposes already laid up in heaven
long before the foundations of the world were laid.

As the myths of which I have spoken are the product of
ethical ideas, are the body which they assume in order to
become visible, it naturally follows that they become worthless
in either of two ways. If the idea gains a better and
more suitable body it migrates. If the idea becomes outworn
and is no longer needed, the body ceases to have an animating
principle. In either case the myth becomes valueless except
as a historic relic. It may, however, have become enshrined
in some great work of literature and art. Or it may have
been incorporated in some book regarded as possessing lasting
religious authority. In such cases the rising generations put
new meaning of their own into tin; empty vessel. In such

IDEA AND MYTH 107

fashion the Neo-Platonists of Alexandria treated the Eomeric
tales. And in such fashion ordinary ( Ihristians of to-day treal the
tales of the < >ld Testament, attributing to Abraham and Jacob and
David Christian feelings ami purposes. Of course, this method
of proceeding i- quite unhistorical ami full of anachronism. We
shall Boon have our children protesting against these adapta-
tions as they protest nowadays against the historic improba-
bilities of the tales of Jonah and Balaam. Nevertheless, so
long as such fanciful treatment of Jewish myth does not offend
the taste and intellectual tone of the community, there seems

00 great harm in it. Kami only arises when the half-educated

1 mm hint who has learned enough to see that the fanciful treat-
ment of myths is inn inert, but who has not grasped their true
character, endeavours to galvanise their original meaning into
a new existence. If myths are read as history, and used to
supply an outward and historic sanction to ideas which the
progress of society has rendered obsolete, then indeed they
become a cause of mischief. Then they no longer resemble
works of painting and sculpture, which serve for the adorn-
ment of life, but rather mummified corpses galvanised and
attempting to pass among the living.

CHAPTER X

THE OUTGROWTHS OF MYTH

If the vague and childish character of the true myth be fully
realised, it will be easy to understand how, when the intel-
lectual atmosphere changed, it tended to fade away or to
change. Setting aside the moral process of which I have
spoken, a disturbing intellectual process was also going
on. When intellect was so far developed that men began
to study consistency, and when the sense of truth had
grown, so that people drew a clearer line between history and
fiction, then the weakness of the myth was made clear. The
more intelligent of mankind began to ask the question which
our children are beginning to propound in regard to fairy stories
or even many of the narratives of the Bible : Is it true ?
And to that question there could be no answer. The myth
was neither true nor false, but rather indifferent to fact. So
as the sense of historic fact arose, people became dissatisfied
with myth. The process was no doubt a very slow one, and
for ages it wras but a select few who, like Plato, disliked myth.
But when the process had once begun it could never stop,
but must necessarily go on till the whole house of cards fell
to pieces.

Few things, however, either in nature or in human his-
tory, pass away without lea\ing results. And so myths as
they faded left in the world abundant traces, the nature of
which we have briefly to consider.

An essential character of the myth is, as we have Been,
its complete independence of time. A main cause of its

THE OUTGROWTHS OF MYTH tog

decay La the growth of more rigid ootiona of history, of facl as
related to time and to place. It seems therefore quite natural
that the continuations of myth Bhould by being brought into
more rigid relations towards time, be divided into three '-lasses,

those of the past, tin- present, and the future. Let us con-
BideT each of these in turn.

1. Th> Past — The growing sense of history and historic
fact must in the course of its formation everywhere have found
it necessary to deal with the surrounding masses of myth.
The mythopoeic tendency was far too deeply seated to be
easily expelled. What seemed at first possible was to intro-
duce some order among myths, to reconcile their contradictions,
to eliminate some and retain others, and to bring the result
into relations with the world and the facts of history. Thus
the first result was not so much an extraction of history out
of myth as a foisting of myth into history.

In the case of Greece we can clearly discern this process.
On one side came in the tendency to construct out of
mythology an ordered past for the Greek people. Throughout
Greek history such exploits as the travels of Hercules and the
ten years' siege of Troy by the army of Agamemnon were com-
monly regarded as events of history ; and in the politics of the
( rreek cities they weighed as such. When Alexander under-
took his great expedition against Asia, he regarded himself as
the continuer of the work of Achilles. And when he reached
the Far East his progress was materially aided by the belief
which prevailed among the Greeks and Macedonians that
1 n'onysus had in ancient days penetrated to the same countries,
and won victories over the same races. In the time which
followed, the same tendency to read myth into history pre-
vailed more and more. Strabo observes that it is dishonouring
to the genius of Homer to suppose that he narrates mere
fiction ; to the great geographer the wanderings of Theseus and
Odysseus are sober realities. Polybius tells us that iEolus
the Homeric lord of the winds, was a man well skilled in
navigation and a weather prophet ; and he assigns to the
Cyclopes and the Lsestrygones a historic seat in Sicily. This
fashion of treating myth may be found in the Greek historians,
in Philistus and Tima^us, Ephorus and Xenophon, though it

EXPLORA TIO E I 'ANGELICA

is more prominent in later writers, such as Strabo, Diodorus,
and Pausanias.

The Egyptians had learned to regard their gods as the
earliest known rulers of the land, before the dynasties began.
It may be from the Egyptians that Euemerus borrowed
his system of treatment of the Greek mythologic tales.
Euemerus was a traveller who lived about the year B.C. 300,
and who professed to have discovered in his distant voyages
documentary proofs, in inscriptions, that the deities whom the
Greeks worshipped were really pre-historic rulers and con-
querors whom popular fame had, after their death, raised to
the divine rank. This extraordinary story, whether put
forward in good faith or not, had a wide acceptance and
influence in antiquity, affecting the views of almost all subse-
quent writers. It was, in fact, an attempt to explain the origin
of the Pantheon from the working of laws of human nature
with which the ancients were familiar, since with them the
raising of a person to divine rank was quite a familiar pheno-
menon, as it is to this clay in India and China. And thus it
was acceptable to all who did not believe in the present
existence of the gods. But here scepticism vindicated itself
at sad cost to history.

But more important to our present purpose than this
dilution of history by myth is the retention in the writing of
history of the tendencies of the mythopceic age. It is clear
that the motive which first caused the writing of history must
be a motive which has influence at a comparatively low stage
of civilisation. It is quite certain then that it was not an
abstract love of truth, or the desire of enlarging knowledge.
Even among ourselves such a motive as this is not strong,
save with a few specially trained persons. The further we go
back' in history the less powerful do we find it. We must
find for the origin of history motives of a less abstract and
exalted kind. Often it would take its beginning in the desire
to exalt some hero, or the origin of a noble house, and to
magnify the deeds of ancestors. Sometimes the motive would
be patriotic 01 priestly. But of the noblei history the, motive
was ethical or religious. The author wished to set forth his
strong conviction of the divine justice which linked together

THE OUTGROWTHS OF MYTH m

crime and punishment or to explain the dealings of the higher
powers in the affairs of men. In fact the early writing of
history would often start from the same motives and purpo
which give rise to ethical myth ; but the indefinite tense of
the myth has to give way to the preterite tense of history,
and the necessity of not clashing with well-known historic
events must never be wholly lost sight of.

In the proem to Paradise Lost, Milton, with lofty direct-
ness, tells us that the purpose of his poem was " to justify the
ways of God to man."' If we turn to the introductory chapters
of the early Greek historians we shall not find any so direel
statement of ethical purpose; but that purpose is nevertheless
present. Herodotus tells us that he wrote in order to prevent
the great aud wonderful deeds of Greeks and Barbarians from
Losing their due meed of glory. But the most striking
feature of his work is his strong belief in the ever-present
action of a divine Nemesis, of the power of which his whole
history is an illustration, almost as much as is the Seven against
Thebes of yEschylus. The most recent of English editors of
Herodotus1 has selected two tendencies as notably dominant in
his author's mind : first, the tendency to revise the data of the
memories and traditions of earlier events in the light of more
recent history; and, second, the tendency to impart a moral
or quasi-religious meaning to stories of the past. " No critical
student," he writes, " can cite any story or even any statement
from these books, as historic or authoritative, without having
satisfied himself whether, and to what extent, the ] passage
betrays the influence of this subtle pragmatism/' In the
Cyropcedeia of Xenophon we have a work which professes to
be historical, but is little more than a romance, so completely
is it dominated by the wish to teach moral lessons. No doubt
when compared with the surrounding nations, and especially
with Orientals, the Greeks are eminently distinguished by love
of scientific fact and historic accuracy. It is only when we
try them by a modern standard that we realise how entirely
idea dominated mere fact in all their art and literature. Of
course the motive of the history was not always highly ethical,
just as myths were not always ethical ; but history was nearly
1 Macau, Herodotus, Books IV.-VI., Introd. p. lxv.

EX PLO RATIO EVANGELICA

always strongly motiv6 or didactic, inspired and penetrated by
some idea which shines out clearly alike in narrative and in
recorded speech.

I do not, of course, mean to say that an ancient historian
would usually invent a narrative to suit his purpose. Things
take a far less simple course. Just like the myth, the
historic narrative arises among ordinary people, and is modified
by their subjective feelings. In fact various versions of history
arise, embodying different feelings, and the historian selects
among them those tales which he regards as most probable :
that is, which seem to him most in accord with the ordinary
course of the world. If he thinks that vice usually meets
condign punishment, he will be more ready to accept a version
of history which records such punishment than one which
makes crime pass unpunished, and so forth. It is not the
conscious intention of men which moulds history, but ideas
working beneath consciousness in the minds of historians.

We should naturally expect that the ethical inspiration of
history would be more prominent among the Jews than among
the Greeks ; and this is certainly the case. In the early
records of the Hebrews, myth passes into history by imper-
ceptible gradations, and it is impossible to say where the one
ends and the other begins. The mythical histories of Lot, of
Isaac, and of Jacob are told in so serious and realistic fashion
that with untrained readers they pass as history. And they
may well contain a proportion of history. It is only when we
can trace in them some of the well-known features of the
myth that we can definitely call them unhistorical. For
example, the story that Isaac concealed his relationship to his
wife, Rebekah, for fear of Abimelech, king of the Philistines,
is a duplicate of the story how Abraham gave out in Egypt
that Sarah was his sister and not his wife. This facility of
transfer of a tale from one person to another is a mark of
the myth. And when we read in the life of Jacob of the
origin of the sacred stone at Bethel, or in the life of Lot of the
destruction of Sodom, we can scarcely fail to recognise letiologic
myths. Certain physical phenomena called for explanation,
and naturally found one in events of the lives of the early
Jewish heroes.

THE OUTGROWTHS OF MYTH 113

When, on the other hand, we reach narratives which cer-
tainly have Bome historical foundation, such as the books of
the Kings, the Btrong ethical tendency which is so marked a
feature of the Jewish myth is still bo prominent as to rouse
the strongest suspicions of the accuracy of the chronicles. The
idea that the temporal prosperity of Israel depends directly on
the satisfactory character of the relation of the kings to the
God of [srael completely dominates the whole history; and he
can know but little of psychology or of human nature who
supposes that, in the presence of such a bias, the mere love of
truth and accuracy, that feeblest of impulses, would prevail.
This judgment on grounds nf probability is confirmed by the
analysis of tin- documents themselves; but here we evidently
have a matter much too great to be taken up in the present
connection.

i ■_' » T/n' Futv/re. — Another of the outgrowths of myth is
prophecy. Instead of forming the history of the past, ethical
ideas may mould that of the future. Perhaps this classification
of prophecy may savour of paradox, but it is easily to be
defended. In mythopceic times ethical feeling and experience
naturally and inevitably finds expression in myth. Later on,
in times of prosperity and energy, it reads itself into history.
But in times of external oppression and national failure it
creates a future more adapted to the ideal reign of truth and
virtue than the existing present.

In order to understand prophecy, just as in order to under-
stand the older notions of history, we must begin by einanci-
pating ourselves from those tendencies and prepossessions of
mind which have been induced in us by the progress of
physical science. When we talk of prophecy we regard the
future as rigidly objective. Astronomy is the most prophetic
of our sciences, seeing that it can foretell to the minute the
date of a future eclipse of the sun or an occultation of a planet.
In past clays prophecy wras far more vaguely conceived, nor
was tlic distinction between the future and the ideal so clearly
marked. The future was regarded as potentially and ideally
contained in the present. And this, after all, is the truth.
There are certain animals which are prescient in regard to
changes of the weather. They judge not by any miraculous

8

U4 EXPLO RATIO EVANGELICA

communication as to changes to come, but by some feeling of
the present, some experience stored up in their organism which
bids them connect certain features of the present with a future
of a particular character. So when men are in a more in-
stinctive, and less vividly conscious and reasonable state, they
draw conclusions from existing ethical facts as to the ethical
history of the future. According to Novalis character is
destiny. Yet of course all prophecy is, in the nature of the
case, very precarious. A thousand unforeseen circumstances
may intervene between felt antecedent and foreseen conse-
quence. All that can be felt is the condition of forces at the
time, and the most perfect perception of that condition does
not necessarily include a perception of causes which may
thwart or change the action of those forces. The rain-fore-
telling animal knows the conditions under which it usually
rains, but it does not follow that under these conditions it
must necessarily rain, at all events at some given spot. So
the seer who has highly developed spiritual instincts will feel
the spiritual undercurrent of the world, but he may be mis-
taken in his suppositions as to when and where the under-
current will rise to the surface.

Prophecy was in a marked degree an endowment given to
Israel. The form which it took, especially during the Macca-
bsean age, was a vision or anticipation of the coming of a
Messiah, the rising from the grave of faithful Hebrews, and
the reign upon earth of a renewed and righteous Jewish race.
But after all the noblest and sublimest of the Jewish prophecies
were those which could not be falsified, because they did not
assert the time or the place of their fulfilment. These merely
stated great spiritual laws and tendencies which lay at the
foundation of human life, and so must govern its course upon
earth, must again and again be manifested in history. Such
are the sublime statements of the later Isaiah, and of some of
the authors of Psalms. Hooted not in mere Jewish beliefs,
1h it in the profoundest facts of common humanity, the prophecy
of the suffering servant of Jehovah is quite as true for Chris-
tians to-day as it was for Jews when it was first uttered.

(3) '/'/" Present. — Besides embodiment in history, past or
future, ethical ideas may form for themselves a shrine beyond

THE OUTGROWTHS OF MYTH

the Limits of the world of space. And in two ways. Either
they may produce parables, tales never meant to pass as true
from the poinl of view of history, but only to embody ideal
or ethical truth; or they may inspire assertions as to the
world which lies beyond sense and experience, in regard to
which the word truth can be used only in a changed sense.

The parable is of all the offsprings of myth that which
most nearly resembles its parent. The likenesses between the
two are many; they only differ in that parable is more self-
conscious; it does not wish to be regarded as history, and it
has an actual inventor, instead of springing from the general
consciousness. Thus instead of the softening of tendency and
the gradual subordination to evidence which we find in the
earliest history, we have the ^etiological and ethical motive
persisting in full or even increased force, while the relation to
fact and to time is frankly given up. As fruit exists, from
the point of view of morphology, merely in order to protect
some kernel or seed within it, and give it a better chance of
germination, so the parable is merely an attractive vehicle in
which a fact of ethics or a counsel of wisdom may be concealed,
and handed on from teacher to learner and from age to
The tale may be openly in disaccord with known facts, like
the beast tales of iEsop or the fairy tales of our childhood ;
or it may take the form of a novel or romance, which may or
may not be true to fact, but must embody some ethical
content.

Often it is by no means easy to draw the line between
myth and parable. The well-known story of the choice of
Hercules between Virtue and Vice, who appear to him in
female form, is, on the face of it, a piece of Greek mythology ;
yet we know that it was only a moral tale invented by Prodicus
of Ceos. The myths of Plato are apparently built on the
foundation of stories current among the Orphists or other
religious societies, but adapted to Platonic doctrine. It is
curious that Plato in several passages insists on their truth ;
he says in the Grorgias l that his tale is not a pudo? but a
X0709 or true account. On the other hand, when Socrates

1 Oorgias, 523 A., cf. Timarus, 20 D., 21 A.. 26 C. Westcott, Religious
Thought in the West, p. 3.

n6 EXPLORATIO EVANGELICA

proposes, in the Repitblic, to teach the youth of his imaginary
state that the different classes of men in it were originally
made by the gods of various metals, gold, silver, iron, and
copper, and that their nature thus bore a heaven-bestowed
imprint, it is not easy to say whether he is inventing a myth
or merely establishing a moral tale.

In the writings of the Old Testament the parable is by no
means unknown. Nathan admonishes and convicts David by
the parable of the ewe lamb. And some of the prophets are
never tired of reproving the faithlessness of Israel to its divine
mission by citing parables of the doings of a faithless wife. The
whole book of Job, and perhaps that of Ruth, is to be regarded
rather as parable than as myth. But it was after the time
of writing of the Hebrew Scriptures that the parable became
an ordinary vehicle of ethical and religious instruction. And
thus this form of sub-myth is far more prominent in the New
Testament than in the Old ; and it is commonest of all in the
Synoptic Gospels.

No one, of course, would make the use of the parable by
the Founder of Christianity the occasion of an accusation of
untruthfulness,1 and yet in some cases the natural reverence
felt for all his words has tended to turn mere parable into
statement of fact. For example, in the parable of Dives ami
Lazarus the curious use of a definite proper name has caused
commentators to suppose that we have in it rather a revelation
of the future life than a mere moral tale, and it has become a
capital piece of evidence as to the state of the departed.
Parable has been read as myth, and myth by a natural process
has become history.

When, however, the idea takes form neither in prophecy
of the future, nor in parable, but in statements as to the ideal
world which underlies the world of mere sense, then it produces
doctrine. This view of doctrine may perhaps seem strange.
Certainly it is not that ordinarily current. Most people think

1 No one, thai is, whose mind has been brained. Very instructive is an
experience of Mrs. Jamieson {History of our L<>r<i, i. o7.r> ; quoted in Taylor's

Primitive Culturt i, " I remember thai when I once tried to explain to a g 1 old

woman tin- proper meaning of the word parable, and that the story of tin'

Prodigal Son was not a fact, she was scainlalisnl ; she was quite BUM that Jesus

would uever have told anything to His disciples that was not true."

77//; OUTGROWTH.^ ( >/■' M I 77/ i 1 7

of doctrine a- a statement of fact, forgetting that outside the
world of experience there can 1"' oo such thing as fact. But
the view I now state is that which, in earlier chapters of this
work, I have tried to establish. And it is ooi really so distanl
as it may at first seem from ordinary ways of thinking. The
most orthodox would be satisfied with the assertion that
doctrine is spiritual truth revealed to man by the Higher
Power. And to this assertion I have no objection, so long as
the words of it are not understood or misunderstood in a con-
ventional way. It is a statement of truth, but of truth uot
absolute but relative, truth of which man and not nature is
the centre. It is revealed, but by no external and authoritative
revelation, by that rather which is from within.

At present I must not enter further into the origin oi
the development of doctrine. The third book of the present
work is devoted to that subject. To those chapters I must
refer the reader. Meantime, we must consider, in the light
of the principles thus far set forth, the early documents of
Christianity, and the earliest history of Christian teaching,
in the age before Christian doctrine properly so called came
into being.

CHAPTER XI

THE CHRISTIAN CREED

It is now time to pass from our general sketch of the nature
of religious ideas and of the forms in which they are expressed
to a special investigation of Christianity, and in particular of
the Christian Creed. The attempt is a bold one, nor can I
hope to escape the opposition and the anger which have always
greeted any attempt to apply to the Christian Creed the
principles which are applied freely to other forms of faith.
The methods of comparative religion, it is commonly felt rather
than thought, are very well when used to classify and elucidate
other forms of belief, but they should not be loosed on
Christianity. The feeling is most natural. What lover will
admit that his mistress is one of a class ? The more he is in
love, the less he will allow that the rules which apply to other
women have anything to do with her. But the lover in time
may become a husband; and then, though his love may not
fade away, it will change its nature and he will learn to know
as well as to worship. Those to whom criticism of Christian
history and faith arc repugnant have only to lay the present
book aside.

The Christian creeds are certainly in a historical aspect
profoundly original. They contain, it is true, some statements
which belong to all ethical religion, such as the existence of a
Deity, and the forgiveness of sins. But even these statements
take quite a new form in the Christian Church. Other state-
ments of the creeds arc purely Christian.

The fact is that the life of .Jrsus was the occasion and the

THE CHRISTIAN CREED no

cause of an enormous development of the spiritual faculties

and perceptions of men. He found us children in all that

irds the hidden life, and he left us men. The writings of

his immediate followers show a fulness and ripeness of

spiritual feeling and knowledge, which makes the best of
previous religious literature, even the writings of Isaiah and
Plato, seem superficial and imperfect. From that time
onwards men in christian countries seem to have gained new
faculties of spiritual observation, and to those faculties there
has lain open a new world of experience of the higher
life.

But this mass of new observation, this Hood of new feeling,
had to take concrete shape in the world. Earthen vessels had
to be made to contain the fulness of the new life. And of
course this process went on in no arbitrary fashion, but in the
natural way which belonged to man. At an earlier period,
attempts might have been made to give it a body of myth.
But the reception of true myths on a great scale was now
impossible. So the newly revealed facts of the spiritual life,
and the new ways of regarding the world, took form in some of
the fashions of which I have briefly spoken as the outgrowths
or successors of myth. These we must briefly consider in
order. Indeed, the remainder of this book will mainly consist
cf a consolidation <>i' the position which we have now reached.

Before we speak of the articles of the Christian Creed, we
must consider the word with which that Creed begins, the
word credo. What is the real nature of religious, and in
particular of Christian, belief?

Historically the Creed seems to have arisen out of the
baptismal confession. Those who came to the baptism of
John seem to have merely confessed their sins and promised
amendment. But when baptism became the portal of the
Christian society, the custom naturally arose that the convert
should state what it was that he regarded himself as pledged
to. As we shall see in the chapter which deals with baptism,
the earliest converts were merely baptized into the name of
Jesus Christ, The last verses of Matthew record a more
elaborate profession of faith in Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in
that baptism which succeeded the simple baptism into Christ

EXPLORA TIO E I A NGELICA

of which Paul speaks, and from this germ the Creed developed.
It is quite natural, since psychology was at the time im-
perfectly understood, and moreover the early Christians were
usually uneducated men, that some of the propositions which
passed into the Creed were not such as could properly, accord-
ing to the essential ideas of Christianity, be matters of faith.

If, in preceding pages, I have rightly analysed religious
faith, it consists in a resolute and practical acceptance of the
divine ideas, and an attempt to carry them out in the world.
Christian faith, in the same way, consists in a resolute and
practical acceptance of those of the divine ideas which were
specially revealed in the person and in the teaching of the
Founder of Christianity. Ultimately and in essence it is far
more nearly related to the will than to reason and understand-
ing. It certainly cannot be permanently enclosed in any form
of words. Yet since it is a necessity of human nature that
any idea when received by the will should find an outward
body in words, it must produce an intellectual expression.
This expression must comprise propositions as to the data of
experience. Faith takes experience in a certain light ; and
unless it does so, is banished to the realm of subjective feeling
aucl of the unknowable. It reads the facts of the world about
us in a particular way. It supports certain views as to the
conscious life of men and their relation to divine power and
impulse. And since Christianity is a historical religion,
Christian faith must needs look at least on certain parts of
history in a glow provided from within.

In none of these fields, the outer world, the inner world,
history, can faith lead directly to any objective or any infallible
knowledge. Knowledge is reached by the use of our powers
of observation and of reasoning, on the basis of observation.
These powers being alike in all men, any formative idea
which comes into irreconcilable hostility with them must wither
and decay. This is, however, comparatively a rare case. The
ordinary conllict is between knowledge on the one hand, and
an imperfect or erroneous expression of an idea in some of
the fields of observation.

]}y the very constitution of human nature, it is impossible
even for the most skilled observer perfectly to discriminate

THE CHRISTIAN CREED 121

between the idea and its intellectual expression. It' we were
perfectly logical, we should say, " I accepl the idea, and I think
the idea may be best embodied in these words." But things
being as they are, the warmth of loyal will ami of moral
passion attaches to the statements of the Creed as well as \>>
the inner faith. And thus he who repeats the Credo of
Christianity feels as he speaks that these statements are bound
up with his higher life, are the body without which his
ultimate beliefs could not live. These remarks are equally
valid whether we are thinking of the creed of an individual or
of a society. Of course an individual may so sink his own
pi ant of view in that of a society, that he becomes incapable
m|' holding any creed apart from it. In that case the doctrine
hardens into dogma which is accepted on authority.

The notion that from the first the Christian Church had
one formulated creed which she imposed on all converts is
quite contrary to the facts of history. Those who were
baptized into the Church did no doubt repeat some formula of
belief. But this formula varied from age to age and from
district to district. Forms of creed arose, flourished, and
decayed accordingly as they met or failed to meet the require-
ments of the spreading society. Even that church which
among all churches exercised most authority, the Church of
Koine, though she guarded for herself carefully in the third
and following centuries a creed supposed to have arisen among
the Apostles themselves, yet allowed in the churches of Italy the
use of formulae which introduced considerable variations on it.

The history of the early creeds of Christendom has been
sketched in clear outline by one of the most learned and scientific
of theologians, Professor Harnack, in a pamphlet published in
1892. He shows that the Creed which we call the Apostles'
Creed arose in Southern Gaul in the fifth century, and was
adopted under Prankish influence by the Church of Pome in the
place of other formulas. As early as the third century, however,
a Creed closely resembling it had been adopted in Pome, and
attributed to the Twelve Apostles. Harnack gives the text of
this ancient and venerable Church document as follows : '

1 Das Apost. Olaubensbekenntniss, ed. 25, p. 7. Translated by Mrs. Wan!, in
the Nineteenth Century, July 1893.

EX FLORA TIO E V ANGELIC A

" I believe in God the Father, Almighty, and in Jesus Christ
his only begotten Son, our Lord, who was born of the Holy
Ghost and the Virgin Mary, crucified and buried under
Pontius Pilate, who rose on the third day from the dead, and
ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand of the
Father, from whence he shall come to judge the quick and the
dead ; and in the Holy Ghost, the Holy Church, the forgive-
ness of sins, and the resurrection of the flesh." Other
Churches had creeds of their own, usually adding fresh clauses,
but seldom making omissions. The so-called Apostles' Creed,
for example, adds the Descent into Hades and belief in the
Life Everlasting. The Nicene Creed, in use at Pionie from the
sixth to the eighth century, was adopted mainly in opposition
to the Arians, at that time very powerful in the west.

But the period with which we are in this book concerned,
the century which followed a.d. 25, was a time before the rise
of any creed. Doctrine was in course of formation in the
hands of great thinkers such as St. Paul and the Fourth
P>angelist, but it was in a more or less fluid state. The
necessity for forming it into a systematic whole had not yet
arisen. Baptismal formulae were arising, but no generally
accepted confession. Hence, though in this chapter we
speak of the Christian Creed, it is of its constituent parts
that we shall treat in subsecpuent pages rather than of the
Creed as a whole. If we roughly follow the order of the
clauses of the earliest Eoman Creed, it is only for reasons of
convenience.

The first, and in many ways the most important, of the
bodies in which the ideas of early Christianity manifested
themselves was in the construction of an ideal life of the
founder. Such a life had, of course, a basis in fact. For the
existence of the historical Jesus we have the authority of
Tacitus, and we shall see hereafter that great part of the
teaching and some of the doings recorded in our Gospels may
be accepted by the most sceptical of inquirers as historical.
But over and around this historical framework, the early dis-

ciples constructed ;t pala< !' history, not real but ideal,

not related to fact or record but to supposed necessity. "Thus
it behoved I In isl to suffer."

THE CHRISTIAN CREED 123

The first stage in producing an ideal life of the FoundeT
consisted in working into that life fulfilment of the Messianic
prophecies, or prophecies regarded as Messianic, in the ( »M
Testament

Very Boon a second stage was reached, at which it became
the great concern of tin' disciples to provide for their Master a
fitting entry into the world and an appropriate departure from
it. AVhile yet the doctrines of the incarnation and the exalta-
tion were in a very early stage, there was a tendency to make the
great biography begin with a miraculous birth or baptism and end
with a physical resurrection. It is not easy to decide with
a rtainty whether as a matter of actual chronology the accounts
which we now possess in the Gospels of the baptism and the
ension of the Master, and the prophecies of his second coming,
are earlier than the Christologic doctrine of St. Paul. But
at least they are logically earlier, they belong to a more
primitive side of human nature, and lie nearer to the Jewish
incunabula of the faith.

The story of the miraculous birth would seem to be a
reflection in history of the idea of the exalted nature of the
Founder. The story of the resurrection in the flesh and tin'

usion is a reflection in history of the sense of his spiritual
presence among the disciples. The first of these ideas gave
rise at a later stage to all the theories of the Church as to
the person of Jesus Christ. The second idea or experience
gave rise to all the theories of the Church as to the relation of
the Founder to his followers on earth.

A very early embodiment of the ideas was that which
appeared as prophecy. A Christian ideal of the future had to
take the place of the current Jewish Apocalypses. Jesus
Christ was to come as judge of quick and dead.

And more and more, as the outlines of the life of the
Founder were fixed by published Gospels, and his second
coming was thrown into the more distant future, a scheme
of doctrine grewT and spread. Not the past only and the
future, but the present also, the spiritual world which lies
about us and within us, was reconsidered in the light of the
Christian revelation.

All of this construction was destined to last many ages.

124 EXPLORATIO EVANGELIC A

Much of it, especially a great part of the doctrine properly so
called, which is independent of place and time, was probably
destined to last as long as man continues to dwell upon the
earth. But wherever the body which contained the idea
was made of earthly elements, it contained in it the seeds of
decay.

In order fully to understand any of the articles of the
Creed, we should have to consider it in a variety of ways,
investigating

(1) Its connection with the early documents of Christianity.

(2) Its pre-Christian history, alike in Jewish and in Greek

and in Oriental religion ;

(3) Its baptism into Christ ;

(4) Its relation to Christian experience ;

(5) Its relation to theologic construction.

It is, however, clear that thus to treat of the great doctrines
of Christianity completely would be to write a history of the
religion from its origin to the present day. It is necessary to
define what part of all this vast field I propose briefly to
survey. I intend to attempt to answer, at least in outline, the
first three of the questions above set forth in regard to the
main doctrines of the early Christian Church. So far, we have
purely historical questions. Question 4, which involves alike
history and psychology, I can attempt but in a very imperfect
and fragmentary fashion. It is possible here to sketch the
psychology of belief, and the manner in which doctrine is accepted
and held, but to exhibit the roots of doctrine in Christian
experience is beyond my scope. On question o I shall scarcely
touch. If my views are justified, it is as embodiments of
experience, and' not as parts of an intellectual system that
doctrines are to lie valued.

These limitations of our field make it possible to set
comparatively narrow limits t<» the period to be historically
investigated. Our concern is only witli the time between
the origin of Christianity and the middle of the second
century. When we pass the middle of the second century,
we approach the time when early Christianity, the teaching of
the Apostles, gives way to something of a different char-

THE CHRISTIAN CREED 125

The order of Bishops is established, giving the Church

a hard and clear outline. The Canon of New Testament
Scriptures is formed, and becomes a standard of appeal in all
controversies. Theological systems arise. Ononeside, [renseus
and Tertullian develop the idea of a visible church as the
channel of a grace which no longer comes freely to inspired
prophets and teachers. < >n the other side, I 'lenient and I >rigen
develop at Alexandria on a Platonic basis logical and philosophic

mes of Christian doctrine. Thus arose the Church and the
theology of the Middle Ages.

The ossification which the Church underwent at the end of
the second century was doubtless necessary to protect it from
destruction at the time, but it renders that Church less fit to be
a source of life and growth to those who live under modem
conditions. The age of inspiration, the time of abounding life
was over, and though no doubt there have been from time to
time great revivals of inspiration in the Church, yet the
conditions which surrounded them were so unlike ours, that
those who speak of religion in broad fashion find it more
profitable to look elsewhere.

To the professed theologian and the historian every age of
the Church is full of instruction. But those who have to make
a selection, and who are searching rather for what is important
to modern faith than for complete knowledge, may be pardoned
if they hark back to the great, the classical age of Christianity,
as philosophers go back from Descartes to Aristotle, and as
students of art go back from the Renaissance to Pheidias and
Praxiteles. Thus it is the origins of Christianity which chiefly
claim our attention.

CHAPTER XII

EARLY CHRISTIAN HISTORY

We have traced in outline the origin of ethical religious
history, and have seen that it owes but little in its birth to
the desire to learn fact, but a great deal to the desire
so to set forth the facts of the past as to give an embodiment
of truths of another kind, those of feeling and experience.
Testimony as to actual fact was to those who wTrote religious
history only what clay is to the potter and marble to the
statuary, a necessary material, the properties of which must be
respected if the work made is to be durable, yet which is in
itself without form and void, until an idea is introduced into it
by a living spirit.

In the course of the last century, a conception of history
quite different from that which had before prevailed has been
gradually making its way. This conception marks a great
intellectual progress, and we cannot doubt that it has its
origin in a divine impulse. The qualities of impartiality and
justice, respect for any proven fact, and the earnest desire to
trace the true relations and successions of events have become
more and more conspicuous in the writing of history. The
historian has laid aside the advocate and assumed the judge.
He tries to set aside as far as he can all his own preposses-
sions and idiosyncrasies, and to regard in the whitest of lights
the subject of his study.

This scientific and critical frame of mind has filtered
through into the study of history from the study of the
physical world. By long experience those who have worked

EARLY CHRISTIAN HIST< >RY [27

at Midi sciences as chemistry and biology have Learned that
knowledge is to be gained aot by an eager investigation of
nature from a personal point of view, but by the subordination
of impulse, by the exercise of a patience almost infinite, and a
Belf-effacement almost complete. Generation after generation
of scientific workers has cultivated the white light, the exclusion
of all thf idols of the cave, the market-place, and the church.
Generation after generation has raised to a higher and higher
moral level the pursuit of naked truth for its own sake, until
that pursuit has become, to whole classes of men, the highest
form of religion. And this new faith of the worship of the
actual has passed from physics and biology into historical
studies; it has changed the character of art by demanding
closer conformity to nature; it has gradually permeated all
our thoughts and ways until, especially in England, the word
false, even if used in the sense which only implies want of
precise correspondence with fact, at once brands any statement
beyond redemption, and makes any view or theory stand
condemned and hopeless.

There are two sides to history which must be clearly dis-
tinguished, if we would avoid utter confusion. We must
separate historic criticism from the historic construction which
it precedes, and for which it lays a foundation.

first then of historic criticism. This is a destructive
force, and a force of immense power. It is liable to become
historic scepticism, and if exercised unduly may reduce tin-
fabric of history, at all events of ancient history, to a heap of
ruins. For the fabric of history is not adapted to sustain the

tult of methods which are reasonable when applied to
things physical and visible. "We cannot cross-cpaestion historic
characters as we would question witnesses in a law court.
Thus a direct attack on any supposed historic fact, if pressed
home, can seldom be met.

I should be one of the last to deny the use of a critical
examination of history. It should be our object if possible
to ascertain the actual objective facts which happened in the
world from the first, as they would have appeared to a committee
of experts specially appointed at the time to investigate them.1
1 Seu my New Chap ek History, chap. i.

i 28 EX FLORA TIO E V ANGELIC A

Much of the life of the present writer has been spent
in an endeavour to revise, to illustrate or to correct, the state-
ments handed down to us by writers as to the events of
ancient history by confronting them with the most objective
evidence we possess, the evidence of extant remains, inscrip-
tions, coins, and the like. The further such process of verifica-
tion can be carried the better. The more closely our notions
of the words and actions which have made up the past of
mankind correspond to the objective realities, in so much
better position we shall be for really understanding human
nature and human progress.

It is, however, quite obvious that even in regard to out-
ward and visible events we shall comparatively seldom be
able to arrive at perfect certainty. Take an event of the
present century witnessed by thousands, of whom a few were
lately alive, the battle of Waterloo. Of that event there are
a multitude of quite inconsistent accounts in existence, between
which it is difficult or impossible to make choice.1 How then
can we hope to reach objective truth in regard to events
further from us ? In the majority of cases we can only be
sure of general facts, but not of details. "We can only accept
the version which is offered on the best authority or most
nearly conforms to ascertained circumstance ; and even that
we can only accept with a verbal reservation to the effect that
if any fresh evidence makes its appearance we must reconsider
the verdict.

Further still from objectivity is that which in history was
never visible or audible. We can be sure that Charles I. was
beheaded on a certain day in 1G49, though we cannot form
a final opinion as to many of the actual details of the execution,
lint when we proceed from this fact to such matters as Charles's
relations to the Parliament, the justice or the expediency of
his execution, and the like, we involve ourselves in deeper and
deeper shades of doubt. And if this is the case in regard to modem
history, still more is it true in regard to that which is ancient, the
documents of which reach us as wreckage after a destructive storm.

1 Mi-. Archibald Forbes has shown the same divergence of testimony to hang
:i more recenl event, tin' battle of Sedan. See Nineteenth Century,
March 1892.

EARL 1 ' < V/A'/.v TIAN HIS T( )R )' 129

Tims too direct attempts at objective criticism lead, at
all events in the case of ancient history, to it- destruction

and to chaos beyond. It is like melting down a statue oi
gold or silwr for the sake of the material of which it is
made.

The defects of this objective analysis of ancient history
may be easily shown. Such history we derive direct in most
cases from ancient writers. And to take the statements of
these writers apart from their original intentions is quite mis-
leading. As we have seen, they sometimes produced not
objective history but ideal history. To take their narratives
undiscoimted is like criticising a picture by an old master by
comparing it with a photograph. It is like the method of the
followers of Euemerus, who through not understanding the true
nature of myth, turned it straight into narrative, and so
instead of extracting history out of myth only succeeded, as I
have already observed, in foisting myth into history. The
Euemerists were the historic critics of a scientific age,
but they lacked historic imagination and the comparative
method, and so they failed. "We must also fail if we persist,
in defiance of the (dearest evidence, in supposing that the
writers of ancient history were possessed by a love of fact as
fact comparable to ours, and cared for nothing but to make
their picture a naturalistic transcript from life.

The general character of history writing in antiquity is
well set forth by a learned recent German writer l : " Xone of
the ancient writers intended simply to describe real life or
actual personalities; this would have seemed to them a breach
of the laws of art. Even the historians did not set in the
first place the establishment of the naked truth, but the pro-
duction of a certain effect on their readers. Thus at best they
have presented to us pictures of individuals exaggerated into
types ; often they have merely set up examples with a view
to moral edification or warning ; very generally they have
given us rhetorical exaggerations or caricatures of the truth.
The few exceptions serve but to prove the rule."

Before we attempt to apply the methods of modern historic
realism to historic narratives, we must, as a preliminary, if we
1 A. Bauer, DU Forschungen zur Griechiscl hte, 1888-1898, p. 3.

9

130 EXPLORATIO EVANGELIC A

can, remove from them the admixture of idea and purpose.
If we want chemically to analyse even a mollusc, we must
begin by taking from it the breath of life, to the analysis of
which our chemical methods are not equal. And if we want
to discern the hard facts hidden in a fabric of history con-
structed with a purpose, we must first of all remove the
purpose with all that depends on it. If, as is often the case,
we cannot compass this introductory operation, then we must
be content to take the narrative as it stands, as belonging to
another sphere than that of objective history, as more closely
related to the practical world of idea and purpose than to that
of actual fact.

Thus beside the narrow canal of objective history runs a
broader and a more varied stream of ideal history, the history
not of that which is known to have taken place, but of that
which was supposed to have taken place. Where we have a
variety of historians we always have a variety of accounts ; nor
is it hard to see how that variety arises. One thing doubtless
happened ; but the various spectators, filled with ideas and
anticipations of their own, saw that one thing variously, even
apart from any bias of conscious purpose. Thus many accounts
of what had taken place arose, and passed in the mouths of
men. Among these accounts there was a struggle for exist-
ence ; some faded away, and others won general acceptance and
were woven into the web of that established convention which
was generally believed to be history.

In the struggle for existence much depends on the
environment. Now we know what is the environment in
which narratives of events have had to make good their claim
to existence. It is human nature. And in the composition
of mankind, the love of precise accuracy is a very feeble motive
compared with many others, personal, social, religious. The
tales which pleased had an enormous advantage over those
which merely informed; and those which conveyed an accept-
able moral triumphed over those which were dull records.
Thus the subjective elements of human nature were ever
present in the moulding of the evidence out of which historians
had to spin their webs. Even in the current accounts of
event, bo near us as the battle of Waterloo, or the surrender

EARLY CHRISTIAN HISTORY 131

at Sedan, there is an immense elemenl of subjectivity, and as
we work our way back to the misty days of antiquity this
element grows ever larger and larger in proportion to the
nucleus of fact.

It is clear that before our historical records can be treated
as of objective validity, it would be necessary to extract from
them this human bias. As a statement of scientific method,
this thesis is above attack, and when it can be acted upon,
it has an absolute claim. But unfortunately the removal of
complicated and hardly traceable ancient bias by modern writers
who are not without bias themselves, and very imperfectly
acquainted with the atmosphere of bygone days, is a task in
the ureat majority of cases of extreme difficulty. Ill-judged
attempts in this direction are apt to land us in complete
uncertainty.

Another observation has to be made. The notion that
only objective history is of value is not founded. When we
can reach objective or actual history, no doubt it is well to do
so. But that ideal or subjective history is without importance
to us is an utterly false view. Probably it has been imported
into the domain of human history from the domain of physical
science, which draws a hard and black line between fact and
falsehood. But in very truth, it is often far more important
to know what was believed to have taken place than what had
really taken place. The former may have had a far stronger
influence in human affairs than the latter.

To take an instance. The belief of the Greeks in the
expedition of Agamemnon and the ten years' siege of Troy had
in several crises of Greek history a very important effect upon
politics. Whether as a matter of fact any such expedition
of the combined Greeks in the heroic age took place is an
interesting question which the progress of archaeology may
one day enable us to answer. But whether or not such
expedition really took place, the belief that it had taken place
is a constant factor in actual Greek history. He who should
exclude all mention of it from the Greek annals because it was
probably mythical would be a pedant.

There has certainly been a tendency among historians who
prided themselves on being scientific towards excluding from

132 EXPLORATIO EVANGEL1CA

history what has been shown to be probably of subjective
origin. In so far as they have gone beyond true measure in
this matter, it is due to that crude application of the methods
of lower science in higher science of which I have spoken in
an earlier chapter. The prejudice haunts us all, and it is not
easy to overcome it. When we learn that some particular
event recorded in history belongs not to the objective element
in it, but to that which is subjective and human, we are apt
to feel like men who have been deceived, and to expel the
intruding account with contumely. Thereby we show that
we think too highly of the things of sense, and too meanly of
man. The disease is deep-seated, and it will take a long while
to cure it.

"When Strabo tells us that he regards it as dishonouring
to the genius of Homer to suppose that the events which he
records are mere fictions, we smile. But on many faces the
smile would at once die away if it were added that in the
Bible also there is an immense deal of ethical and poetic con-
struction of history. As I propose to dwell on this certain
truth, I wish at once and most strongly to protest againt the
notion that ideal and subjective history at all necessarily
savours of imposture, or should be made war on in the interests
of science. We must criticise and distinguish ; but after our
criticism we must have the courage to reject the vulgar error
that all in the sacred narratives which does not satisfy our
tests of objectivity is necessarily dross. If it does not meet
the historic test, it may meet another of a more human and
practical kind. If it does not belong to time and space it
may belong to the diviner realm of ideas, and embody truths
compared to which material facts are poor and empty of
meaning.

What we have to learn is to give to history that which
belongs to history, and to idea that which belongs to idea. It
is for critical history to determine the character of the writings
of early Christianity, their origin, and the medium in which
the writers lived. And it is for a sane theology to preserve
for the lasting good of mankind the noble ideas as to God and
man and the Founder of our religion, which the evangelists
embodied to the best of their ability in narrative

EARL V CHRISTIAN HISTi )R Y 133

Now this problem which lies before us in regard to
Biblical history is almost exactly parallel to the problem
which lay before our fathers and our grandfathers in regard to
Biblical science; and which in our 'lays may be regarded as

practically solved.

There was a time, a time within the memory of many of
us, when there was a painful collision between the methods
and results of physical science and these same Biblical narra-
tives of ours. It was thought that there was danger to the
Christian faith in allowing that the world was more than -i\
thousand years old ; and it was regarded as impious in an
astronomer to assert that the sun could not possibly have stood
still at the bidding of Joshua Able and learned men gave
up their lives to the attempt to reconcile the data of geology
with the narrative of Genesis, or to showing that the star
which shone over the cradle of Bethlehem might be an ordinary
phenomenon of nature. That strife has passed, it is to be hoped,
for ever. However good a Christian a geologist might be, in
our day he would not seriously quote a verse of Genesis as an
authority in this subject. However pious an astronomer
might be, he would not try to modify his view of the apparent
motion of the sun to suit the tale about Joshua. And the
ordinary educated Christian no longer goes to the Bible for
facts of geologic or biologic science, but for moral and religious
principles, for encouragement in life and hope in death. It is
not the purpose of the Bible, men are agreed, to teach us facts
about the world, which we can easily learn by the use of our
own faculties, but to help us in the higher life, and to tell us
truths of a nobler kind than we could have reached for
ourselves. And educated Christians are generally agreed that
truth of a higher kind is to be found in some of these narra-
tives of the Bible which least accord with the actual fact.
The divine purpose and meaning of the wTorld shines out in the
Hebrew myth of the creation ; and it was precisely the desire
to set forth that purpose and meaning which was the original
motive of the author of Genesis.

We shall have to learn to take in the case of historic
science the same line which we have followed with so much
success in the case of physical science. We must allow

134 EXPL0RAT10 EVANGELICA

criticism to employ in the case of Biblical history the same
methods which experience has shown to be successful in other
parts of the realm of history. We cannot abandon those
methods or dispute the results to which they lead without
wilful blindness. But the mind can only exert its power
of judging in certain directions. There is much in the realm
of aspiration, passion, will, and spiritual experience with which
it can deal but very imperfectly. Let it exert to the utmost
all its powers, and let us gratefully accept all that it can
discover for us. But at the best our knowledge, especially in
the realm of history, is hemmed in by narrow limits, and
floats like a small star in the infinite space of the ideal.

There is an actual truth to visible fact ; and there is a
higher truth to the nature of man and of his spiritual environ-
ment. To the first teachers of Christianity, the latter of these
kinds of truth seemed to be all-important, and mere truth of
fact a trifle in comparison. In order to understand their
writings, we must use their eyes. We must try to discover
what were the realities which they sought to embody in narra-
tive as well as in doctrine, and to use these truths for the
benefit of aspiration and conduct.

Thus criticism corrects the crudeness of criticism. We
learn that the most impoitant function of critical investigation
of ancient history lies in the examination of documents and of
historians. This has been more generally recognised in
Germany than among us. And in Germany an immense
impetus has been given to Qaellailehre, the tracing to ultimate
sources of all the statements of historians, and the attempt to
estimate the value of those sources.

Criticism is at once legitimate and necessary ; and has
become a condition and preliminary of all attempts at historic
construction. But it cannot furnish us with the principles of
historic construction. For them we must look elsewhere.
The root principle of all historic construction must be sought
in the theory of evolution.

Taking the events of ancient history one by one, it may
well seem an almost hopeless task to determine how much
truth there is in our accounts of each. Grote frankly gave up
ull attempts to produce any history of Greece before the

EARLY CHRISTIAN HISTORY 135

beginning of the Olympiads, and contented himself with re-
peating tales as they are told by ancient writers. Bui we now
know that the line drawn at the first Olympiad, which Grote
supposed to be firmly fixed, is probably invented and arbitrary,

and the torrent of scepticism, passing that puny barrier, has
flowed far down in Greek history. The case is the same in
regard to most of ancient history. But when evolution is
accepted and thoroughly understood in its bearing upon history,

it colligates all the detached facts into groups, and so gives
them a power of resistance which otherwise they could never
have had. "When every phenomenon in ancient history is
regarded as on the road from one point as to which we have
evidence to another point as to which we have evidence, then
the whole fabric gains strength and coherence.

The historian as such is certainly bound to accept the
theory of development, that every movement arises out of other
movements, and must he studied in relation to its environ-
ment. But there is another side to the matter which is
scarcely less important, and which is far more commonly over-
looked. Every historian worthy of the name now writes more
or less completely under the dominion of the idea of evolution.
But many writers fail to see the limits of evolution as applied
to history, and the natural prejudices of the evolutionary
method, against which one has to guard one's self.

The more a historian is possessed by the genius of evolu-
tion, the more likely he is to disregard that in history which is
most human and most divine. A great man may appear to him
to be merely the result of his antecedents and the voice of his
age, and what specially belongs to him as a man, character,
will, inspiration, is thrust into the background. The features
of personality no man borrows from his predecessors, nor can
he transmit them to his followers ; they are not his, they are
himself. It is going too far to suppose with Carlyle that
history is made by the successive personalities and inspirations
of heroes; but it is a mistake quite as fatal to suppose that
history works itself out, apart from the character and put poses
of the great men of history. On the average these special
forces of character and purpose tend in the long run to cancel
each other, yet they cannot be overlooked. History is like a

1 36 EX PL OR A TIO E VA KGEL1CA

river. If one knows its source, and the direction which it
must take, one can tell what sea it will eventually reach ; yet
its course is not direct, but bent in this direction and that by
the resistance of intervening hills and rocks. The extreme
historical evolutionist wants to see history like a river which
runs in a straight line from source to mouth, and regards aber-
rations as defects to be smoothed down as far as possible.

It is not difficult to prove that advanced historians some-
times mistake the prejudices of their method for objective
tendencies of human progress. Take the following thesis,
" History is only possible on the presupposition of the absolute
continuity and homogeneity of experience, and that presupposi-
tion is uprooted and annihilated by the presupposition of
Revelation." ]

In the word history in this statement there lurks a fatal
ambiguity. Doubtless the presupposition of Revelation will
do much to spoil the writing of history from the evolutionary
point of view, because it will introduce at every point in the
past the working of a force which cannot lie weighed and
measured. But to say that it is therefore excluded from the
course of history, that is, of human affairs, is to endeavour to
construct all human progress on the basis of a subjective
necessity, almost of a convenience.

Thus the more scientific in the evolutionary sense of the
word our writing of history becomes, the more we shall find in
it a process of levelling down. Great men will shrink, good
men become commonplace, bad men have redeeming qualities ;
our light and shade will become so gentle that there will be
little to strike the eye or to impress the imagination.

Every psychologist knows that to the outer world as it
exists in experience and knowledge many elements are con-
tributed subjectively. Each of us, in a sense, builds for
himself an outer world. Still stronger is the subjective
element which must be mingled in any rendering or any con-
struction of history. An utterly objective history of any event
or any period is an impossibility. Testimony may furnish us

I:. \V. Macan, '/'A, Resurrection 0/ Jesus Christ, p. 116. Mr. Macan qualifies
tatement in many ways : I <1" no1 quote it ;is his new, but only as ;i clear
- 1 nt <-nu 1 1 1 of the view natural to the evolutionist as such.

EARL J ' < 7/A7.s TIAN HIS T< )R V 137

with the bricks of which our historic evidence is composed,
1 ui t that which Minis the bricks together, and the whole form

ami purpose of the house, must he to a large extent provided
from within. Will and character lie at the basis of historic
knowledge, even mor< tially than they lie at the basis of

knowledge of the material world. We make our historic world,

as we make the physical world, though at the same time we

are made by it.

That which we contribute from within to the fabric of
history consists partly in a personal Mas, which can never be
wholly set aside, and partly in the results of present experience.
"When we perceive certain forces and tendencies at work
around us, we cannot help assuming that they worked also in
past times. We must needs explain the past by the present,
and model the past on the analogy of the present. Historians
of past generations were unconsciously under the spell of this
tendency. We are conscious of it ; but it acts nevertheless.
We have, however, learned to keep it in bounds, and to
temper it by constant resort to the most objective tests to
which history can be submitted.

The thing of most practical moment is to ascertain, so far
as possible, some means of reconciliation of the demands of the
intellect, which will not be set aside, and the dictates of the
practical faculties, which also demand a place in our views of
the world. And the analogies of art and government, on which
we have dwelt in a previous chapter, at once suggest to us the
line which the reconciliation is likely to take. Modern art has
to make great concessions to naturalism, and modern govern-
ment to democracy ; yet art can only be kept alive by style,
and government by organisation. So history must frankly
accept the doctrine of development, and yet keep itself from
inanity and death by insisting on the presence in history,
through all developments and amid all clashes of force, of will,
character, and divine inspiration.

The active powers which find in the events of every day
divine control, in spite of the apparent fixity of law, find
also in history a divine revelation in spite of the apparent
domination of might and the survival of the fittest. Looked
at from without the course of history may seem fortuitous,

133 EXPLORATIO EVANGELIC A

blind, and unmeaning, the fitter who survives being often
inferior to the less fit who perishes. But looked at from
within, history must seem to those who have a religion and
believe in a God, a revelation of progressive steps of certain
divine ideas ; a revelation slow, halting, and imperfect, and yet
unresting.

It needs but little array of proof to show that the great
change in the manner in which history is regarded has had
profound effects on the foundation and the structure of
religious doctrine. From the first ages of Christianity certain
processes have been going on, of which we now for the first
time fully see the scope and results. In the earliest formula-
tion of the Christian Creed, we find not only statements as to
the nature of God and of man, but also definite historic
assertions as to the birth, death, resurrection, and ascension of
the Founder of Christianity. And as in after ages the Creeds
developed, these historic assertions became constantly more
definite and more numerous. Not only assertions as to the
life of the Founder, but statements as to the Creation, as to the
Fall of Adam, the calling of Abraham, and the like, became
definitely incorporated into the expression of the Christian
faith. For a while this subordination of history to ethical
principle and spiritual moaning was quite natural, and had no
evil effect. But when in more modern times the conception of
history gradually changed, difficulties began to arise. The
assertions of the Creeds in regard to history were taken to be
that for which they were never meant, purely colourless and
objective statements of fact ; and instead of being regarded as
outgrowtli and embodiment of ideas, they were placed under
doctrine to form its support. At the present day the great
majority of professing Christians think that the foundation of
their faith rests on historic facts ; and view not merely with
apprehension, but with anger and indignation, any attempt to
invalidate those facts.

One Christian will say that unless the fall of Adam was
historic fact, the redemption by Jesus Christ, which is its
remedy, cannot lie historic, and so his faith is made vain.
Another will say that unless Jesus was born of a virgin
mother, he could not be the Son of God or the Saviour of

EARL Y CHRISTIAN HIST( )R ) ' 139

men. Fet it is certain thai neither of these supposed historical
events can be established upon evidence such as is required
in secular history iii order to establish an event as accepted.
Are, then, these Christians willing to found their creed on
evidence which would be held insufficient to prove the mosl
insignificant fact of ancient history?

The more thoughtful and liberal of modern religious
authorities have passed beyond this stage, but not with full
consistency or a complete realisation of the position. They
are willing to allow the rights of criticism, hut they do not
seem prepared for the remorseless logic with which those
rights, if once allowed, will be exercised.

That English theologians have not yet faced the position
which has arisen may be judged from the writings of one of
the wisest of them, Dr. Talbot.1 In one of his excellent
discourse he says, in regard to the Old Testament Scriptures,
that we should be " quite ready to leave scholars and historians
to test and try all questions about the making of the books,
and tiud out for us to the best of their power what the truth
is ; but that the value of the books for us goes deeper than all
that, and that it is to be found in the spiritual truths which
God has made them the means of teaching us." Here Dr.
Talbot goes very far, even further than is necessary, since he
is willing to refer Scripture history to a historical tribunal,
without warning his hearers that such a tribunal may have
misleading prepossessions of its own. But on the very next
page the writer assumes the historic truth of the very narratives
which he is willing to submit to a critical tribunal. He asserts
that the miracle of the passage of the Red Sea " set a stamp
upon Israel which was never lost.'' I think that almost any
impartial historian would hold that he puts cause for effect, and
effect for cause. It was not the passage of the lied Sea which
proved Israel to be the people of God ; but the conviction of
Israel that it was the people of God which embodied itself in
the story of the miracle at the Eed Sea.

If the historic accuracy of the Old Testament is to be
submitted to experts for judgment, it does not do to assume in

1 At present Bishop of Rochester. See his Leeds Parish Church Sermons,
p. 118.

140 EX PLO RATIO EVANGELIC A

the meantime that judgment will go one way. And further,
whatever course is taken with regard to the history of the Old
Testament must also be taken in regard to the history of the
New. Would Dr. Talbot be ready to submit the fact of the
Besurrection, for example, to scholars and historians, to " find
out to the best of their power what the truth is ? "

The following chapters may be regarded as an attempt to
solve the problems thus raised. They are an endeavour to
give to history that which is history's, and to idea that which
is ideal. But the solution seems to me to be a matter of
infinite difficulty. It is not to be reached by the assumption
of the infallibility of Scripture. And it is not to be reached
by giving over religious history to the full sweep of historical
scepticism. Criticism must first prune the excesses of criticism.
An observant psychology must see how far it is reasonable to
indulge the merely destructive power of reasoning. Investiga-
tion of the real nature of truth and the real nature of illusion
must serve to guide us in one of these middle courses hateful
to all partisans of extremes, but helpful to those who love
neither extreme, but who stand near the true path of progress,
midway between them.

No doubt the principles of historic criticism have not taken
possession of the minds of ordinary educated people as have
the main principles of science. For that reason my course
will seem to many overstrained and pedantic. Where historic
criticism does not rule, the ideal construction of history is
quite easy and natural. For example, many will be ready to
accept the view that "a being unexampled and unique will
come into the world in an unique way." And this thesis will
make acceptable to them some of the early Christian statements
which are repugnant to strict historic science. I have no wish
to attack these more conservative schools. By all means lei
them retain their ideal history as long as they can. The
points in which I differ from them are of small importance in
comparison with the points in which I agree with them. But
my endeavour is to raise a solid wall of defence for what is
essential in Christianity by taking as a foundation the bed-rock
• if verifiable truth.

Nothing is more common than for well-educated men to

/. . / RL I ' CHRIS TIA N HIS TORY 141

i to me that such and such an event of early

Christian history did not happen, and I will give it up; mean-
time 1 claim a right to accept it." This is, however, to make
a serious mistake in the Logic of historic knowledge.

It is not reasonable to expect in history the same kind of
demonstration which one requires in matters of science. The
cosmogony in Genesis cannot maintain itself as a record of
literal fact, because the progress of science has shown that the
world took form otherwise, and acquired living inhabitants
otherwise. But when we show the unsatisfactory character of
much early Christian history, we cannot thus rigidly demon-
strate its incorrectness, nor can we put something mure satis-
factory once for all in it- place. Events in past history can
seldom be rigidly proved or disproved. Commonly they can
only be shown to be probable or improbable. Thus the ques-
tion is not whether some particular event in the evangelic
history can be proved not to have taken place. The question
is a broader one : whether we shall deal with the testimony
of the Evangelists as we are accustomed to deal with the
testimony of other ancient writers. And we must either deal
with them thus or else blindly accept their testimony, so far
as they can be reconciled one to another.

Yet if we look at the progress of the educated world we
shall see that certain views as to what may be accepted and
what must be rejected from the historic standpoint are steadily
making way. Many widely-held views as to what occurred in
the foundation of our religion are being put out of court, not
by being disproved, but in consequence of a slowly progressing
change of mental attitude among those who have studied
history in a scientific spirit.

To those who now visit Jerusalem there are pointed out
the spots where all the most noteworthy events connected with
the life of Jesus took place, not only the Via Dolorosa and
< rethsemane, the place of crucifixion and the place of sepulture,
but also many other spots. There can lie little doubt that to
the crowds of pilgrims, Russian, Armenian, and the rest, it is
a great help to faith thus to stand at the very spot where took
place the sufferings of their Master and the miracles of early
Christianity. Yet no educated person would dispute the right

1 42 EXPL0RAT10 EVANGEL1CA

of archaeologists to discuss the value of these local assignments,
or to point out the insufficiency of the evidence on which many
of them rest. Scientific archaeology must needs keep itself
free to judge by evidence and to judge impartially, even in the
sacred air of Jerusalem. It would be a mere folly to disturb
the devoted worship of Christian pilgrims by bringing before
them historic doubts whether the associations which they attach
to various spots in the sacred city belong legitimately to those
spots. But it would be an equal folly to write on the topo-
graphy of the city with a mind under the dominion of the
sacred associations of worship. And the most ruthless
topographical sceptic, though he must expect to be misunder-
stood by Russian and Armenian peasants, can always take a
higher line even in piety than they if he quotes the reply of
the angels, " Why seek ye the living among the dead ? He is
not here, but is risen."

The historic criticism of the life of Jesus stands on precisely
the same scientific basis as topographic criticism at Jerusalem.
By it also in some cases illusions useful to faith may be
destroyed. But it has also no need to be actively iconoclastic,
and can in the last resort maintain that worship in the spirit
is consistent with any historical views which the progress of
inquiry may force on our acceptance.

My position, briefly stated, is this: (1) As regards the
documents of Christianity, criticism must be allowed free
course, though to be satisfactory it must be appreciative, and
therefore reverent ; (2) As regards the teaching of the Founder
of Christianity, we are by no means ill-informed ; (3) As regards
the events of his life, we are unable in the present state of our
knowledge to discern between fact and fable, but events
strictly miraculous rest on no sufficient evidence ; (4) As
regards the founding of the Christian faith, the course of
history can only lie accounted for by the supposition of ;i
divine inspiration of the founder and his disciples, an inspira-
tion which has lasted down to our times.

The inevitable corollary of these views is thai the evidence
tor the truth of Christian teaching can no Longer rest mainly
on the events of the life of Jesus Christ. In the main it must
real on the experience of individuals and of the community.

EA RL ) ' CHRIS TIA N HIS TORY 1 43

It cannot 1"' aaid that Christian doctrine is thus detached from
history, but it La detached from definite events of history, and
attached to the general course of events, as interpreted by the
Christian experience of our own and previous ages.

I shall proceed to consider in order, first, the early Christian
documents; second, the teaching of Jesus ; third, the events of
his life; and fourth, the history of the early Church in its
relation to Christian doctrine.

CHAPTEK XIII

THE GOSPELS

If we take up almost any theological work we shall find it
stated that Jesus did this or said that ; and a footnote giving
a reference to any one of the Gospels, even the Fourth, passes as
a sufficient justification. When the Gospels are thus quoted
as a final court of appeal it is assumed that they are infallible,
or at all events that they were written by careful witnesses
to preserve in a perfectly white light the actual words and
deeds of the Master. It is assumed that none of the authors
of the Gospels had any subjective bias, and that the principles
of evidence by which they went were such as prevail in our
law-courts. No view could be further from the truth than
this. In dealing with any ancient historians there are two
things which are imperatively necessary. First, we must con-
sider what were their sources of information. And second,
we must consider what was the subjective bias of each, what
was his purpose in writing, and what the elements which he
added from his own mind to the testimony coming from with-
out. If the Gospels were, as our ancestors held, dictated by
the Spirit of God, it is impiety to criticise them at all. Bui
if they are to be criticised, they must be examined according
to the recognised canons of historic study. As Freeman ' well
observes, " No spirit can be more directly opposed to any
method of sound historical study than one which puts any
writer, however illustrious, beyond the reach of that process

1 Methods oj Historical Study, p. 21G.

THE GOSPELS 14;

of comparison and criticism which is the very life of all
historical research."

True historic method would suggest that in this aa in
other cases we should begin our investigation with the earliest
and the most authentic of the Christian writings, the Epistles
of Paul But as regards the life of his Master, the witness of
Paul is of little value. It does not appear that Paul ever saw
or heard Jesus. And* although he had good opportunities of
learning the facts from those who had been the immediate
followers of Jesus, he certainly did not greatly care* to use
those opportunities. According to his own statement in
Galatians, he did not after his conversion hasten to visit the
Apostles and to lie instructed by them. But for some years
he remained in Arabia and Damascus, and at the end of that
time went to Jerusalem, where he stayed but fifteen days with
Peter, seeing none of the Apostles save Peter and James. His
comparative indifference to the facts of the life of Jesus is
accounted for in his Epistles. The death of Jesus interests
him more than the doings and even the teachings of the
Master ; and the exalted Christ tends to overshadow the
historic Christ. He preaches less Jesus the Messiah than
Christ crucified. The line which is taken in this whole matter
by St. Paul is extremely suggestive and interesting, but it
makes his testimony to his Master's life very scanty.

We pass then to the Gospels. We have four accounts of
the life of Jesus, whereof the fourth stands apart, and is doubt-
less of later date, while the other three clearly go back to a
common tradition and show among themselves a strong family
likeness. It seems now to be generally allowed that the
Synoptic Gospels, though they contain later interpolations,
were produced nearly in their present form between about
65 A.D. and the year a.d. 100. "Whether Christian tradition
rightly assigns their authorship is doubtful, and this is a
question into which I cannot enter.

The three Synoptic Gospels, when critically compared,
reveal very different points of view and varying conceptions of
the Master. A thorough examination of the personalities of
the three authors is the necessary preliminary to any intelligent
study of the life of Jesus. This has been attempted by many

146 EXP LO RATIO EVANGELICA

writers ; l it is quite clear that there is no room for such an
attempt in the present work. Mark is more simple, adding
little to the traditions which he repeats except perhaps occasional
graphic details. Matthew is more attracted by the discourses
than the miracles of Jesus. His incorporation of these dis-
courses in the traditional narrative is often somewhat arbitrary.
He is evidently a Jew of a high type : one who was able really
to appreciate his Master's teaching, though not free from some
Jewish faults, such as a tendency to fanciful interpretation of pro-
phecy. Luke occupies an intermediate position between the first
two Gospels and the Fourth. We see in his case more clearly
than in Mark a personal bias. He is a lover of poverty, fond
of miracle, inclining to sentiment. His Gospel is par excellence
that of the humble and meek. Women play in it a greater
part than in other Gospels, and the author is more disposed
than other evangelists to colour his narrative. As M. Eenan
puts it, though too strongly, " Le vrai materiel n'est rien pour
lui ; l'idee, le but dramatique et moral sont tout." ~

All the Synoptic Gospels were put together out of existing
material. This material was the floating legend which arose
during the half century after _ the crucifixion, and by degrees
had passed from the oral into the written stage. Both external
and internal evidence indicate Peter as the principal channel
of the tradition, though doubtless there were contributions
from other quarters. But through what channels the Petrine
tradition found its way into the Gospels we do not with any
certainty know. We can discern three principal sources used
by the Synoptists :

(1) A narrative, often called the common tradition, which
lies at the basis of the narrative in all the Synoptic Gospels,
but is most closely reproduced in Mark.

(2) A summary of the discourses or login of Jesus, mainly
to be found in Matthew.

(3) A separate set of discourses, used by Luke in his
chapters ix.-xviii. This section contains some of the most
beautiful of the Parables of Jesus, such as the tales of the Good

J Easily accessible to English readers is the able analysis l>y Dr. AI>l>ott in
the Encyclopaedia Britwnnica ; art. "Gospels," vol. \. p. 801.
-' /.' a Evangiles, ]>. 202.

THE GOSPELS 147

Samaritan and the Prodigal Son. We cannot doubt that this
source is as authentic as that used by Matthew; but it is
notable that between the two collections of discourses there is
a marked difference of character, as every careful reader of the
Bible must have noticed.

As regards the Fourth Gospel it is exceedingly difficult to
write briefly. Its authorship, origin, and date are matters of
constant dispute. It is impossible for me to discuss these
questions: I can only state the view assumed in this book in
regard to the Gospel. Though it is marked by style and
thought as a unity, it is composed of curiously assorted
elements. It certainly incorporates very valuable and probably
authentic traditions of some events in the life of Jesus. But
this nucleus of fact is overlaid by a remarkable doctrinal con-
struction, in which the tendencies and the style of the author
arc conspicuous. By any writer who tries to reconstruct a
life of Jesus, the Johannine narratives of the last supper, the
crucifixion, and other events must be carefully weighed. But
the writer who is concerned with the teaching rather than
with the life of Jesus will find it impossible to reconcile the
accounts of it given by the Synoptists on the one hand and
the Fourth Evangelist on the other. So much results from
the study of the book itself. If it was written by a personal
follower of Jesus, the words of the Master must have marvel-
lously grown and changed their character in his mind. If it
was written by a Christian of the second generation, he must
have used notes or materials furnished by an eye-witness.
To both of these alternatives there are very grave objections ;
yet one or the other must be true. It is safest to attribute
the Gospel merely to the " school of Ephesus," and to leave
its authorship in doubt. In the next chapter I shall return
to this Gospel ; in the present chapter I shall deal with the
Synoptists.

There can be no question that alike in the writers of our
Gospels and in the sources which they used, whether oral or
written, there was a large subjective element. The deeds and
words of Jesus are not brought before us as they would be by
a modern reporter or a critical historian. No one would in
these days accuse the writers of our Gospels of imposture, or

148 EX FLO RATIO E 1 'ANGELICA

any intentional or culpable perversion of facts. But unless they
were verbally inspired, they must have been subject to the
mental conditions of the time, and written according to the
prevailing tendencies and customs, as well as with personal
prepossessions.

The subjective medium through which they would look on
the world of experience would be partly of Hellenistic or
Greek, and partly of Jewish origin.

At the time when the Gospels were written, or when the
mass of tradition incorporated into them was formed, the whole
population bordering on the Eastern Mediterranean had under-
gone for three centuries, under the dominion first of Alexander
and his successors and afterwards of the Romans, a rough training
in the philosophy, the literature, and the arts of Greece. This
training had not sunk deep. We must not, of course, for a
moment fancy that the Athens of Pericles and Demosthenes
had educated the world to anything like its own level. But
the Greek language had spread on all sides, and with the
language had spread a certain kind of civilisation. No doubt
in some parts, in Persia, for example, and Egypt and Judaea,
the national life had made a vigorous, and to some extern ;i
successful, effort to resist the encroachments of the Greek spirit,
But as is always the way in such cases, the tide of influence
was far too subtle and insinuating to be stopped by open
opposition. I have no wish to exaggerate the Hellenisation of
the East at the beginning of the Christian era.1 But it seems
certain that it had gone so far as to produce a certain rough
uniformity of culture and mental habits in all Eastern parts of
the Roman world. At Jerusalem it met with the most bitter
opposition ; but even in Jerusalem a Greek party existed. In
Galilee the influences of Hellenism found freer course, though.
of course, among ;i race so simple and rural in their habits and
tastes as the Galileans, only a very superficial layer of Greek
cultivation can be supposed.

The late Greek or Hellenistic tendencies which would
dominate the genesis and the writing of history may be judged

1 An excellent estimate of the extent to which it bad reached will be round at
the beginning of Hausrath 'a New Testament Times, translated in the Library of

tlic Theological Translation Fund.

THE cos I' ELS 149

from the literary works which have come down to us, especially
such works as those of Josephus, Plutarch, and Diodorus. The
comparatively Bevere historic method of Thucydides belonged
to a wonderful age, that of the highest bloom of the Athenian
intellect. Polybius also -lands by himself. In later and
inferior writers we generally find but a faint echo of the
principles of Thucydides, mingled with rhetorical and popular
tendencies, which overlaid the search for historic truth with
a development in which desire, imagination, and love of effect
had a great part.

Probably at that time in all the Levant the true myth-
ma Ian- age was over. But the faculties which had been
employed in the construction of myth were still at work. And
they found their natural field in the adaptation of history to
national and ethical purpose. The more historic spirit of
which Thucydides is the representative might in some degree
sway the educated. But the mass of the people were prepared
to accept historical accounts not by the strict rules of evidence,
but accordingly as it satisfied certain inner needs or agreed
with existing feelings. Few indeed had reached that stage of
veneration for fact at which a historian accepts on evidence a
tale which conflicts with cherished beliefs, and rejects for want
of evidence a tale which has an acceptable moral.

( )ur Gospels belong to the great formative time, when
the great ideas of Christianity were surging up, when inspira-
tion flowed to mankind in a broad stream, and found itself
a place amid worldly surroundings with a rapidity which is
astonishing. Some geologists hold that there have been periods
in the history of our planet when all the processes of biologic
evolution took place with far greater rapidity than now. There
have also been times of sudden growth of mankind. The first
half of the fifth century B.C. was to the Greek spirit such a
time, when art, poetry, the drama, all the great fruits of
Hellenic genius, suddenly ripened. Such a time to the
Teutonic spirit was the age of Luther and of Calvin, when
great systems of doctrine arose suddenly. Such was the
earliest age of Christianity, of which the Xew Testament is the
eternal fruit. But great times of creation are of all times least
critical. Personality and the bias which goes with it are at

ISO EXPLORATIO EVANGELICA

their strongest, while the absence of self-consciousness prevents
men from taking precautions against their own bias, or being
at all aware of it. It is precisely the power of the inspiration
of the early Church which makes the life of Jesus, from the
critical and historic point of view, so embarrassing.

The traditions of the life of Mohammed, which were
handed down by his immediate followers, were at least as
rigidly examined by authority as the traditions of the life of
Jesus. The phrases in which a skilled and impartial authority,
Sir W. Muir, speaks of the former apply undesignedly to the
latter also. " We see," he writes, " how entirely tradition, as
now possessed by us, rests its authority on the memory of those
who handed it down ; and how dependent, therefore, it must
have been upon their convictions and their prejudices. . . .
There may everywhere be traced the indirect but not less
powerful and dangerous influence of a steadily working bias,
which insensibly gave its colour and its shape to all the stories
of their Prophet treasured up in the memories of the believers."
Of course, when Sir W. Muir speakes of prejudice and of
dangerous bias, he writes from the purely historic point of
view. From the religious point of view, it might be that the
bias was for the good of the Mohammedan church.

It is not difficult to select clear examples in which the
surroundings of the early church appear to have given colour
to the life and to the discourses of Jesus.

We find in Matthew x. 16-24, a charge given to the
twelve Apostles adapted not to the circumstances of the time,
but to those of later times. " The brother shall deliver up
the brother to death, and the father the child." " And ye
shall be hated of all men for my name's sake." Such language
as this belongs to a time of bitter persecution, such persecution
as that carried on by St. Paul before his conversion. In the
life of Jesus then: was no persecution, no betrayal to death of
one disciple by another. Nor is there anything to show that
the words of the Master have reference to the remote future :
they are on the face of them words of counsel as to immediate
behaviour. The best clue as to the origin of the whole dis-
course is furnished by the words, "Ye shall not have gone
over the cities of Israel, until the Son of man be come." These

THE GOSPELS 151

words seem to indicate decisively a time shortly after the
crucifixion, while the disciples were still confined to Judaea,
and expected almost daily their Master's return in the clouds
of heaven. According to the rules of historic criticism, they
must then have made their way into the oral tradition; but
as to their origin we are ignorant, nor can we do more than
conjecture whether there may lie at their basis any actual words
of Jesus himself.

In the chapter of this work which deals with the parables
other cases will be pointed out in which the teaching of J<
seems to have been misrepresented by his disciples. No doubt
tin- criticism which attempts to point out these blemishes is
risky. It must go largely on subjective impressions, and it is
apt to become superficial. It is very seldom that an inter-
polation or misrepresentation can be strictly proved ; at most
it can be made probable to an open and unprejudiced mind.
In such matters critic differs from critic. For example, some
commentators think that the words in the Sermon on the
Mount, " One jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the
law till all be fulfilled," cannot have come from the lips of
Jesus, but must have originated in the ultra Jewish section of
the primitive church. But others think that in their context
these words may have a meaning not inconsistent with the
teaching which follows them. The matter might be discussed
at great length without reaching any certain conclusion. Of
course the same thing holds in case of the criticism of the
text of ancient writers generally. All critics of the Iliad
agree that it contains various additions and interpolations,
but they are divided as to what those additions and inter-
polations are. There are more revolutionary and more con-
servative schools of Homeric criticism. In just the same way,
setting aside the notion of verbal inspiration of the Gospels,
all critics will allow that the reported sayings of Jesus must
have suffered in the way both of addition and of loss during
the time when they were passed from disciple to disciple by
verbal tradition. But it will be the tendency of some schools
to reduce this contamination to the lowest point, while other
schools will be disposed to magnify it.

Perhaps the clearest proof of contamination which can be

i 5 2 EXPL ORA TIO E VA NGELICA

produced results from a comparison of Matthew v. with Lulc vi.
In Zt'lr the magnificently spiritual beatitudes of Matthew are
repeated in a sadly inferior form. For Matthew's " blessed
are the poor in spirit," Luke reads, " blessed are ye poor."
For Matthew's " blessed are they which hunger and thirst after
righteousness, for they shall be filled," Luke has " blessed are
ye that hunger now, for ye shall be filled." And so in other
cases. The differences are very suggestive. They show how easy
it was to misunderstand, and to receive on a lower level, the
noble spiritual teaching of Jesus. For we should probably
suppose that the text of Matthew is the more authentic record
of his words.1 And we thus receive a useful warning, that
we must not in any mechanical or uncritical way receive as
coming from Jesus all that the Synoptists put into his
mouth.

We might have expected to find, as we do in fact find,
that existing feelings and beliefs largely modified the life of
Jesus as accepted by the early Christians. In the later
Apocryphal Gospels we can clearly see how a particular bias
of doctrine induced the writers to modify traditional events in
the life of the Master. For example, in the newly discovered
fragment of the Gospel of Peter, we can see running through
the narrative of the sufferings of Jesus there set forth the
influence of the Docetic scheme of doctrine. The Synoptic
< lospels are too early in construction to show in many cases
iniiuence of Christian doctrine, which had not as yet been
formulated. But in a few cases we can see clearly a doctrinal
bias even in some of our Gospel narratives.

A clear and perspicuous example of the way in which
history in the Gospels may spring from a root of doctrine may
lie found in a comparison of the accounts given us by the Third
and Fourth Evangelists respectively of the events of the last few
days of the Master's life. According to Luke, Jesus ate the
hist supper with his disciples on the 14th of the month Nisan,
which was tin; regular day of the Jewish feast of the Passover,
and was put to deatli on the following day. According to
John, Jesus ate the last supper <>n the 1 .">th of Nisan, the day

1 This of course, i- nol the view of every one. For example, Wendt, in his
Teaching of Jesus, regards the record of Luke as more authentic.

THE GOSPELS 153

before the Passovei feast, and Buffered death on the 14th. If
we Inquire into the meaning of this curious variation in so
Bimple a matter of fact as the day of the death of Jesus, we al
once see that it is of doctrinal significance, To Luke the
Lord's Supper is a perpetuation in the church of the Jewish
Paschal meal. To John, Jesus is himself the Paschal lamb,
and must have been slain at the very time at which the lamb
was sacrificed according to Hebrew ritual. Of course, Christian
Apologists have tried to reconcile the two accounts; but this
cannot be done in accordance with the canons of history. It
is quite uncertain which date for the Crucifixion is the true
one. One would naturally suppose that the Synoptic writers
would be more trustworthy in such a matter than the Fourth
Evangelist. Vet some able modern critics lean in this case to
the accuracy of the Johannine chronology.1 But the point
which calls for notice is tins, that in both the two versions the
date of the crucifixion does not stand detached as a fact of
chronology, but is the crown and consummation of a whole
series of events. Luke gives a history of the events of the
last days which can only be reconciled with his date for the
crucifixion, while the history recorded by John can only be
reconciled with the date which he adopts. In Luke the send-
ing of Peter and John (xxii. 8), the arrangements for the
feast, the solemn words with which Jesus begins the celebration,
" With desire I have desired to eat this passover with you
before I suffer," all indicate and lead up to the fact that the
supper is one of the solemn festivals of the Jewish church.
In John the last supper has quite another aspect. It is held
" before the feast of the passover," it has none of the character
of a solemn festival ; the arrest and execution of Jesus take
place on the day of passover, but before the solemn feast has
begun ; and his body is taken down from the cross before
sunset, in order that it may not defile the sacredness of the
feast and the coming Sabbath.

It is clear that in this case one Evangelist or the other, or
one of the sources from which they respectively draw, must
have constructed a whole series of current tales into an ideal

1 Spitta, for example, after a very careful investigation, decides in favour of
the Fourth Gospel. See his Vrchristenthum, p. 265.

1 5 4 EX FLORA TIG E VA NGELICA

history on a basis of doctrine. However, as we have already
observed, such a basis is rare in our Gospels because of their
early date. But the practical tendencies and necessities which
were in later times to find for themselves a body of doctrine
were already working beneath the surface. And we may
often trace in the Evangelists the influence of controversy
between the spokesmen of the Church and the Jews around
them.

Though the earlier part of the book of Acts is not alto-
gether a satisfactory historical document, yet it is very valuable
for sketching the background against which the Gospels grew
up. One thing in particular which it impresses on us is that
the time was one of controversy. Everywhere the missionaries
of the cross met opposition, and it was impossible that such
opposition should fail to control the form taken by the earliest
Christian teaching. And as the Gospels took form among the
Jews, they are sure to be full of traces of Jewish opposition
and scepticism. Now, as we learn from all the speeches in
the earlier part of Acts, the Christian advocates were most
concerned with one purpose, to prove Jesus to be the Messiah,
and in arguing with the Jews to this end they necessarily
appealed continually to the Scriptures. Here were documents
which were allowed to be sacred by Jews, both Christian and
anti-Christian. Both parties allowed that the question whether
Jesus was the Messiah could best be solved by an appeal to
Scripture, which was allowed to be full of Messianic prophecy.
To judge from the speeches in Acts the Apostles did not usually
appeal to their Master's teaching to prove his mission. They
did not appeal with complete confidence to his reported
miracles, since in the belief of the time Satan as well as God
could grant power to work miracles. lint they appealed with
the greatest confidence to Messianic prophecy, and tried to
Bhow that the life of Jesus corresponded to it. Hence a
double bias: to find an application to the life of Jesus in a
great number <>f passages of the Old Testament, and to find
passages in the traditional Life of the Master which corre-
sponded with .Messianic prophecy. How the bias worked in

one direction we can fairly judge : we know that it produced

or encouraged an extremely uncritical and fanciful manner of

THE GOSPELS 155

interpreting the Scriptures. < >f this kind of exegesis the
(inspels and Kpistles are full. Every one who knows anything

of Biblical criticism, knows how constantly the writers of
the New Testament twist to a Messianic reference passages
of the Psalms and prophets which were certainly written
with quite another purpose. How far the bias worked in
the other direction, in producing or encouraging an unhistoric
way of dealing with the traditions of the Master's life, we
cannot discern with the same accuracy. But it is not reason-
able to doubt that the effect in this direction was great. It
would act in distorting, not so much the words of the Master
as his recorded deeds, his birth and ancestry, his manner of
life, his person.

The early disciples felt bound to find in the life of Jesus
events to correspond to that which they supposed to have
been foretold by the prophets of the Messiah. And this feel-
ing, strongly colouring the medium through which all tradition
of the life of Jesus had to pass, could not fail to tinge that
life. We must, of course, be careful not to exaggerate in this
matter. It would be absurd to assume that a recorded event of
(lospel history did not take place, merely because it conformed
to prophecy. There can be uo doubt that Strauss in his
Leh a Jem carried the argument from prophecy to an absurd
extreme. But even conservative critics must allow that the
influence of which we have spoken really existed in the minds
of the early disciples. In fact, the very naive fashion in
which passages of the prophets are cited in our canonical
Gospels must have aroused the attention and awaked the
suspicion of every intelligent reader of the Bible, although the
phenomenon of which we speak is more prominent in the
apocryphal than in the canonical Gospels. As in early
Christian days an immense number of passages in the prophets
were regarded as having a Messianic reference, and as even-
passage so interpreted had to be brought somehow into harmony
with the biography of the Founder, it is clear that a whole
forest of tares was constantly springing up to choke the wheat
of true tradition.

" If we take," says Mr. Iiendel Harris,1 " the whole body
1 Contemporary Review, August 1893.

156 EXPLO RATIO EVANGELICA

of early literature, of which the canonical Gospels form the
centre and crown, including Apocalypses, party-Gospels, and
the like, we shall find that there never was a body of history
so overgrown with legend, and the major part of these legends
result from the irregular study of the Old Testament, probably
based on the synagogue method of the time of the early
Christian teachers. This reaction of the prophecy upon history
colours the style of authors and affects their statements ; and
it is only by a close and careful study of the writers and their
methods that we are able to discriminate between what is a
bona fide allusion in the Prophets, or what is a trick of style
borrowed from the Prophets, or what is a pure legend invented
out of the Prophets."

From the same paper of Mr. Eendel Harris we may take
an instance for illustration. We read in Zechariah,1 " Pejoice
greatly, 0 daughter of Zion ; shout, 0 daughter of Jerusalem :
behold, the King cometh unto thee : he is just, and having
salvation ; lowly, and riding upon an ass, and upon a colt the
foal of an ass." What the original reference of this passage
may have been it is needless to inquire. By the early
Christians it was regarded as a Messianic prophecy ; and they
maintained that it met its fulfilment in the entry of Jesus into
Jerusalem, riding upon an ass. In describing this entry, Mark
and Luke speak of the ass as a colt merely. Matthew, how-
ever, apparently misled by the words " an ass, and a colt the foal
of an ass," which is really only a Hebrew reduplicated fashion
of expressing an ass's colt, inserts another version which is
scarcely to be reconciled with physical possibilities, " The dis-
ciples . . . brought the ass and the colt, and put on them
their garments, and he sat thereon." If we come down a little
later to the time of Justin, we shall find that the story has
grown still more under the influence of the words of another
prophecy, which also was twisted into a Messianic meaning.3
" Judah is a lion's whelp, binding his foal to the vine, and his
ass's colt to the choice vine." Justin then has the story thai
the disciples found the ass tied to a vine. It is needless to
multiply instances when one is so clear. It is quite evident
that when history was written by and for people in such ;i

1 ix. 9. '-' linhxis xlix. 11.

THE GOSPELS 157

frame of mind in regard to the fulfilment of prophecy, they
could not have kept strictly to fact and evidence. And it is
evident that our Gospels are by no means free from the results
of this tendency.

But we have yet to mention what was perhaps the him-;
important of all causes of transmutation of the tradition, the
difficulty which the early disciples found in discriminating
between what they gathered from the tablets of memory and
what they saw with inward vision. The past and the present,
dream-, revelations, and outward events, were all inextricably
mingled in their minds. Of the frame of mind of the first
Christians we may judge from the Gospels and the Acts, which,
however unsatisfactory as narratives of events, certainly reflect
the general tone of the time. In the beginning of the First
Gospel the whole motive of the narrative is given by dreams
and visions. In accounts such as those of the Temptation,
the Baptism, the Transfiguration, the inner and the outer vision
are so confused together that we cannot disentangle them.
Peter and Paul in several of the most momentous crises of their
lives trust entirely to the direction of visions. All this indicates
a remarkable frame of mind in the Church. The disciples
seem to have lived with their whole souls intent on watching
for heavenly visions and revelations of the Lord. "What came
to them by such a channel of communication would necessarilv
move them far more than the mere contents of memory. It
was indeed a marvellous age, a time of inspiration, of the mix-
ing of the human and the divine into a draught which should
restore to health a sickening world. But what atmosphere
could be less propitious to unimaginative history, to the
writing of precise chronicle or the rigid guarding of chronology?
However sacred the revelations vouchsafed to the early Church
may have been, historic science can never allow objective value
to a source of knowledge of past events so immeasurable and
so loaded with ethical elements.

A good instance to show how easily in that age idea might
give birth to history may be found in the statement in all the
Synoptic writers that at the moment of the death of Jesus the
veil which in the Temple shut off the holiest place, into which
only the high priest entered, was rent in twain. There is, of

i5S EXPLO RATIO EVANCELICA

course, no actual impossibility in such an event occurring.

Yet to suppose that it did objectively take place is to violate

the true historic spirit. The death of Jesus did, for his followers,

open a way into the immediate presence of God ; that was the

fact of experience. It is a fact on which the writer of the

Epistle to the Hebrews dwells at some length. Christ, he

says,1 " entered in once for all into the holy place, having

obtained eternal redemption," so that the veil no longer

excludes his followers from it. But the writer of the Epistle

is content with a doctrinal statement ; he does not speak of

any physical removing of the veil. The tradition which our

evangelists follow prefers a historic to a doctrinal statement ;

the idea is projected into the substance of his narrative, not of

conscious purpose, but by an inward instinct. "Whether there

was any outward occurrence which gave him an excuse for

this procedure we can never know.

The hfjia or sayings of Jesus, which were probably often

repeated by him on various occasions, would suffer least in

oral transmission. As to the occasion and the setting of those

sayings, there might well be various views, and the setting

which seemed to the audience most suitable would in each

case tend to prevail in the struggle for life. Parables would

survive, but the background would be freely sketched in. As

regards events, it is certain that the details of them would be

reported with little accuracy, and that their whole complexion

would depend on other considerations than respect for fact.

It is impossible to conceive a more complete contrast than

that which exists between the fashion in which the early

Christians regarded the Founder's life, and the manner in

which it is regarded in such works as Paley's Evidences, in

which the truth of the doctrines of Christianity is made to

rest on the historical evidence for miracle. In truth, at

the time, the doctrines made their way by their own

] »o\ver.

1 Htb. be. 12.

CHAPTEE XIV

STYLE IN THE EVANGELISTS

In considering documents of the early years of our era we

have to make allowance, not <»nly for the popular tendencies
of the time, but also for the influence of literary style. Xo
one can read the proem of the Third Gospel without per-
ceiving that the author was influenced by the literary
traditions of his time. And the first verses of the Fourth
Gospel show at once that the author had thought and written
in the style of a particular school of philosophy. In this
aspect it is not the want of education which influences or
gives bias to the writer, but the power of an education in
some ways imperfect. A modern reader, unless he has been
specially educated, is very apt to overlook the presence of
literary ] 'repossession, of style, in an ancient writer. Yet
it is certain that ancient literature, like ancient art, is
entirely under the dominion of style. As Cicero has observed,
Greeks cared less for what was said than for the way in which
it was put. They cared for style more than for matter.

It is evidently impossible here to write an account of
style in antiquity, or even of style as moulding the works
of ancient historians. Such a work, if written with insight,
would certainly be of extraordinary value.1 To suppose that
the ancient historians wished merely to give us an un-
varnished narrative of fact, is to take the crudest view of
them. It is exactly like supposing that Aeschylus in the
Agamemnon intended to let us know what really happened
1 E. Xorden's Antib: Kunstprosa partially fills this place.

160 EXPLORATIO EVANGELICA

when his hero came back from Ilium ; or like fancying that
the sculptor of the Aphrodite of Melos merely wished to
make a portrait of a handsome lady of his acquaintance.
Every ancient historian has a purpose, which to some extent
moulds his narrative. The tendency of the work of Herodotus
is religious, that of Thucydides political, that of Xenophon
didactic ; while the writers of the school of Isocrates were
altogether rhetorical in their tendency. The great writers
introduced into the writing of history a number of fashions
and conventions which dominated their feebler successors, and
from which no educated person could wholly free his mind.
In fact, as we come down to the silver age, the oratorical
tendency dominates the writing of history more and more, until
whole tracts of history are hidden from us by a thick veil
of artificially woven words.

As an example of this domination of style, one may take
the convention, prominent after Herodotus and Thucydides,
of inserting speeches. When an ancient historian wished to
indicate in an effective manner a historical position, he
commonly did so by embodying it in a speech, which he
placed in the mouth of one of his principal characters. It is
only in a small minority of such instances, except perhaps in
the case of Thucydides, that we have any reason to think that
the character in question uttered any such speech as is
ascribed to him. It is merely a well -understood con-
ventional way of indicating how matters stood. And even
when the report given us does represent more or less
closely a speech actually made, at all events the arrange-
ment and manner of the speech belong to tin' writer of the
history, not to the speaker, since it was freely composed
around a skeleton of recollected or traditional fact, Tims
ancient history is full of the speeches of great men, few of
which, even in substance, ever came from them. Not that
there was any attempt at deception. It was a perfectly well
recognised mark of a properly written history that the tale
should be partly told by means of speeches. And this
artifice persisted from anoienl into modern days, and has only

ben, me extinct ill ei ail] HIMI t ivel V modem lillies.

It may be desirable to adduce some evidence that ancienl

STYLE IN THE EVANGELISTS [61

historians thus composed their speeehes. We will take
examples tin.- greatest of Greek and the greatest of Roman
historians, Thucydides and Tacitus.

One of the most important writer- "f early Roman history
- Dionysius of Halicarnassus, a <ii>M-k who lived at Rome in
the reign of Augustus. As a historian himself he undertook
the criticism of earlier historians, among others of Thucydides.
The line which he takes in examining the speeches recorded
by Thucydides surprises us. He treats these simply as the
compositi"ii> "t' tin- historian, and nut as the records of any
actually 3poken discourses. For example, speaking of the
mission of the Plataean embassy to tin- Spartan king Archi-
damus, a- given in tin; second book of Thucydides, I)ionysius
writes:1 "The author sets forth such discourses as it was
natural for the two parties to utter, suitable to the actors, and
fitting tin- matter in hand, neither exceeding nor falling short of
the mean. And he adorns them in chaste and clear and concise
style." So again, speaking of the great speech which in the
-a me book Timeydides puts in the mouth of Pericles, Diony-
sius writes : " I know not whether it would be allowed, that
though all this was true, it was suitable to put in the mouth
of Pericles, addressing Athenians in a state of exasperation.
For the production of admirable sentiments and thoughts is in
itself no matter for great admiration, unless they are suitable
to the matter, and the actors and the circumstances, and
so forth. But, as I said before, the historian, embodying his
own view of the character of Pericles, seems to have moulded
this speech unsuitably."

Dionysius speaks of the speeches in Thucydides as the
mere composition of the historian, and criticises them as he
would have criticised the speeches in a drama. Of course,
in this he greatly overshoots the mark, and judges Thucydides
unfairly. For no doubt in some cases, though the style is
Thucydidean, the matter of the speeches comes from tradition
more or less faithful.2 But it is clear that in the time of
Dionysius, that is, just at the beginning of the Christian era,

1 /'•; Thucyd. c. 36.

- See a paper by Prof. R. C. Jebb in Hellenic", where the question is very
fairly argued ; ef. Thucydides, i. 22.

ii

1 62 EXPLO RATIO EVAXGELICA

the rhetorical had almost expelled the historic spirit. The
notion that a historian ought not merely to make up suitable
speeches, but record actual speeches, seems to have dis-
appeared.

The speeches of Tacitus we can judge not merely from the
statements of ancient critics, but on better evidence. We are
able to compare a speech of the Emperor Claudius, given by
the historian,1 with an official record of the same speech
engraved on bronze tablets which were found at Lyons in
1528. The purpose of the speech was to advocate the
admission to the Senate of inhabitants of Gaul. The speech
on the tablets is long, detailed, pedantic, and individual. The
speech as given by Tacitus is brief, clear, and philosophic. It
is no abridgment of the other, but quite an original composi-
tion. It is curious to read the comments of the modern
editors of Tacitus. Brotier, who wrote in the last century,
observes : " Any one who compares can see how Tacitus
altered the speech of Claudius. Some blame Tacitus. But
the speech of Claudius was old-fashioned, pedantic, not
persuasive ; therefore Tacitus had to compose something more
suitable to the subject, the place, and the Imperial dignity."
That is Brotier's notion of the right way of writing history.
A more recent editor, Stahr, observes that Tacitus rewrote the
speeches of the Emperors in the interests not of historic truth
but of style, to suit the Roman taste of the day. We might
even go further, and doubt whether Tacitus would be con-
cerned to discover from the documents what Claudius had
really said. He was quite content to set forth what Claudius
should have said. We cannot in the least blame him for
accepting what was the recognised literary convention of his
day.

It cannot be doubted that the author of the Fourth
Gospel has incorporated in his work some very valuable
historical traditions. Whether these came from the Apostle
John or from some other source is a very difficult question :
strong arguments may be urged both for and against that
view. But wheresoever these traditions came, they are
iii many instances to be preferred to those followed by the

1 Aimed, .\i. 24,

STYLE IN THE EVANGELISTS 163

Synoptists. In particular, the account of the Lord's Supper in
the Fourth Gospel seems to me to be probably more correcl
than that given in the other gospels. And not only has the
Evangelist good information as to some of the doings of his
Master, but also the themes on which his speeches are based
may in some cases come from the oral teaching of Jesus when
on earth.1 Xot always can this be the ease, but at least
sum, •times it seems likely. But that the discourses as they
stand can ever have been uttered by Jesus could not be for a
moment supposed by any person of critical judgment.

In these discourses we do find no doubt essentially
Christian teaching. But it is evident, as all unprejudiced
critics have Been, that in point of authenticity they are on
quite a different level from the logia of the Synoptists. It
may fairly be said that any one who supposed the Johannine
discourses and the Sermon on the Mount to have been uttered
by the same person would prove that he had absolutely no
sense of literary style. Even conservative theologians in Eng-
land- have been obliged to make the concession that the author
of the Fourth Gospel redacts in his own style the sayings of
his Master. It is, in fact, often quite impossible to tell at
what point this writer intends the speech which he is
reporting to end, and his own comments on it to begin. As
an example we may take one of the most profound and
suggestive passages in the whole Bible, the discourse to
Nicodemus {John iii.). In the first place we may observe that
according to the Evangelist only Nicodemus heard that discourse.
Is it likely that he at once, in the manner of a modern inter-
viewer, wrote it down to preserve it for publication ? Some
of the sayings of the discourse are so profound that we cannot
easily believe them to come from any but Jesus. But the
expansion of those sayings is absolutely in the manner of the
Evangelist. And as we read on we find that at v. 13 the writer
slips into the style of preaching or letter-writing, until at
v. 18, with the words "he that believeth on him is not con-
demned," and the rest, we reach a turn at which the Evan-

1 To this subject I shall return in future chapters, especially that on the
" Crisis of Christianity."

2 Dr. Westcott, for instance ; see Proceedings of the Church Congress in 1888.

1 64 EXPLORATIO EVANGELICA

gelist has forgotten the occasion of his discourse, and is simply
preaching in the synagogue. And the matter of the sermon
is such as could not have come from the Jesus of the
Synoptists.

A little further on in the same chapter we have a precisely
parallel phenomenon. In v. 27 we find a discourse of John
the Baptist beginning, " A man can receive nothing, except it
have been given him from heaven." The statement here made
by John, that he looked upon himself merely as a forerunner
of a greater teacher, may come in substance from him ; but
the curiously philosophic and antithetic form of the speech
belongs not to the Baptist, but to the Evangelist. And at v.
31, as in the previous case, the Evangelist has passed from the
Baptist altogether, and is uttering one of his regular discourses.
But he gives no sign of the transition : the reader has to be
guided by the indications of style.

This is after all a tendency deep-seated in human nature.
When a modern divine enters upon an extempore prayer of
any considerable length, he is almost sure in some part of it to
slip into an exhortation of his hearers. Nor is the greatest of
dramatists quite free from a parallel disposition. The speech
of Portia in the Merchant of Venice, which appeals to Shylock
for mercy, soon passes into an eloquent commendation of mercy
by the poet, who even forgets himself so far as to quote to
Shylock the Lord's Prayer, an appeal curiously unsuited to a Jew.

Other discourses of the Fourth Gospel show the same
tendency to slide into theological discourse. And not only the
speeches of Jesus here reported, but even the miracles, have
a certain air of being comments on a given text ; the raising
<if Lazarus on the text "I am the Resurrection and the Life";
the feeding of the multitude on the text " Labour not for the
meat which perisheth"; and so forth.

The writer of the Fourth Gospel was one of the greatest
thinkers and theologians who ever lived. His mind was
steeped in that mixture "I' Hebrew and Platonic thought which
inspired tin- writings of Philo, ami even of St. Paul. His
thought, which was in essence Jewish, clothed itself in the
terms oi Hellenistic philosophy. Tims, though he is one of
tin,' great interpreters to the world of the spirit of Christianity,

STY/.F. IN THE EVANGELISTS 165

we must not look to him for any faithful or objective account
of the life of his Master. Be interprets his Master as the
Plato of tin' Republic and the Theaetetus interprets Socrates,
save that Plato wrote much sooner after the death of Socra
than did the Fourth Evangelist alter the death of Jesus.

This comparison is a very suggestive one, and might be
worked out in considerable detail. For example, every reader
of Plato must have noticed \\ ith admiration the skill with
which the form of the dialogue is used to bring out the Socratic
teaching. It is very unlikely that the keen-minded Greeks
who talked with Socrates wmdd have fallen so easily into all
the dialectic traps which the cunning hand of the master pro-
vides. It is perfectly certain that no teacher could arrange
beforehand the whole order of a dialogue with the precision
and the literary skill which these written discussions exhihit.
The opponents of Socrates are usually lay figures skilfully
arranged as a foil to set forth the method and the teaching of
the great philosopher.

We find phenomena closely parallel to these in the
Johannine Gospel. The density of the Jews, and their per-
sistency in falsely interpreting in material ways the spiritual
teaching of Jesus, are utilised, sometimes almost with wearisome
iteration, to place the spirituality of that teaching in the highest
light. The vulgar materialism of such phrases as "Thou hast
nothing to draw with, and the well is deep: from whence then
hast thou that living water ? " or " How can this man give us
his flesh to eat ? " is used with considerable literary skill to
emphasise the wonderful paradoxes of which the Gospel is
full. But beyond doubt this is little more than a trick of
style. To suppose it a precise version of what really took
place is to hold a very low opinion of the wonderful author of
the Fourth Gospel. In fact, one of the phrases just cited is
reported as having been uttered by the woman of Samaria
when Jesus and she were alone. Whence could a writer of
some sixty or eighty years later have learned the precise words
which passed between them ?

It is, however, clear that we cannot pursue this line of
inquiry, which could only properly be followed in a special
work. The Gospels are works of perfect candour, good sense,

1 66 EXPLORATIO EVANGEL1CA

and truth. They are inspired works, in the sense which I
shall try to establish in the chapter on the Inspiration of
Scripture. And this inspiration has kept them from extrava-
gance, morbidity, and the faults which mark the Apocryphal
Gospels. Yet, notwithstanding all this, they are, to nse a
Jewish expression, " Haggadah," or edifying religious narrative
rather than history proper. We must maintain that the intel-
lectual medium in which the Gospels were formed was of so
powerful and distorting a kind that we cannot, without assum-
ing a continuous series of miracles, suppose that they are to be
trusted from an objective historical point of view, except in
regard to parts of the teaching of the Founder. In saying
this, we of course imply no kind of blame on the Evangelists.
They worked according to the best lights of their time. It is
not their fault that the way of regarding history has since
changed. It is treating them most unfairly if we judge them
by the canons of our own time, or expect them to conform
to notions as to the writing of history which in their day were
nowhere accepted.

But the fact remains that all attempts to extract objective
history from works written in a spirit which is anything but
that of objective history can have but limited success. Few
things would interest us more than to learn the views of the
Founder of Christianity as to his own death, whether he
proclaimed his own second advent, how far he included
Gentiles in his religious outlook, and the like. Yet these are
questions which can never be finally solved. The best critics
are here hopelessly at variance one with the other. And the
reason is evident. In the recorded sayings of Jesus on these
matters we can trace the dominance of certain ideas and
beliefs. But whether these ideas and beliefs existed in the
mind of Jesus himself, or whether they existed in the minds
of the historians only, we cannot possibly say with certainty.
We may form theories on the subject: \\<' can scarcely help
forming such theories: but to rise from theory to historic
certainty is altogether beyond our powers. We are looking
through two glasses al once, and cannol possibly be sure which
is plain and which is coloured.

There are, however, certain directions in which historic

SV )'/./■/ IN THE EVANGELISTS 167

criticism enables us to move with more confident Bteps. The
'•missions of the Synoptists are perhaps as suggestive as their
assertions, [f we find do trace in the early traditions of tin-
life of Jesus of certain views which figure prominently in the
later books of the canon, we may with confidence assign these
views to the periocl after the crucifixion. Again, many of the
savings attributed to Jesus in the Fourth Gospel are so utterly
foreign to his manner of speech as shown by the Synoptics
that we can unhesitatingly reject them. "When the Synoptics
represent the teaching of their Master as different from that of
the Christian society towards the end of the first century, we
can almost implicitly believe them: it is when they represent
it as identical with the teaching of the early Church that we
must receive their testimony with caution. The reason is
evident. If a custom existed in the Church, it would be
almost certain to be reflected on the Founder's life ; but where
there was no such custom the powerful mythopceic tendency
would not come in.

It is curious that no theory of the origin of the Gospels is
so fatal to any attempt to affirm their objective authority as
the view of the most conservative and orthodox critics, who
maintain the Gospel of St. Mark to represent the testimony of
Peter, and that of St. John the testimony of the Beloved
Disciple. For if two intimate friends of our Lord who accom-
panied him throughout his career could hand down to posterity
such utterly different portraitures of him, it is evident that
there is no possibility of recovering his real traits. It is only,
by considering the Fourth Gospel as a highly idealised work
that we can claim for the Jesus of the Synoptic Gospels any
historical reality whatever.

There are many Christian writers of other and more critical
schools who would hold that our modern investigations have
enabled us to discern the character, the methods, and the pur-
poses of Jesus with clearness. They think that we are thus
enabled to strip off the false accretions which soon grew round
Christianity in the course of its early history, and to revert to
the purity of the original doctrine, to quit the river and drink
of the divine source as it wells pure and sweet out of the
sacred soil of Palestine.

1 68 EX PLO RATIO EVANGELICA

But it is certainly not true that a careful and erudite study
of the origins of Christianity will bring all men alike into
harmonious views as to the person and the work of Jesus.
In fact, there is this difference between the progress of physical
and the progress of historical science : that in the case of
physical science men usually grow towards an agreement, but
in the case of historical research they do not necessarily do so.
Unless new authoritative documents come to light, historians
seem to tend rather to wider divergence in opinion than to
unity. Traditional views of history are vanishing on all sides,
but in the place of them we get not new reasoned certainties,
but a large variety of divergent views, which by no means tend
to approximate one to the other. In the case of early Christian
history this is notably the fact. Particular views as to the
work and the purposes of Jesus have been put out of court,
but there is an enormous variety of new views claiming to take
their place. To take obvious instances, Renan introduced into
the life of Jesus something of the French sentimentalist, the
author of JEcee Homo something of the English philanthropist.
Perhaps the strangest development is among the newest. In
the recent biography which is called Pastor Pastor inn, Jesus
appears with traits of the idealised schoolmaster, with a like-
ness to Dr. Arnold. Each writer moulds the image of the
Master after the character which he most admires ; and there
is none who cannot claim some justification in the vague traits
which come before us in the Gospels.

It is true that historic research gives us constantly fuller
knowledge of the state of society amid which Christianity arose,
and of the forces with which it had to deal. So we may
more fully understand the bearings of many of the actions of
our Lord, and may better comprehend those phases of his
character in which he appears as the child of his age, modified
by its surroundings and inspired by its ideals. But these
investigations throw no light on that which is most essential,
that in which Jesus was really original. It is easy to explain
a life or a character if one omits all that is hardest to account
for in it. The background is growing clearer and more detailed,
the robes of the greal Master are forming themselves in
brighter colour and shape ; but his face, his reality cannot be

STYLE IN THE EVANGELISTS 169

thus made out An able writer who baa done much to inform
us as to the Jewish setting of the Master's life disclaims any
pretence to write a life of Christ, on the ground thai "the
materials for it do nol exist."1 This statement is true in a
much wider sense than this writer intends, nor do I think that
it would be disputed by any oue who understands the nature
of historic evidence.

As regards the events of the life of Jesus, the modern spirit
rejects the miraculous element. As regards the teaching of
Jesus, though its general character may be clearly made out,
many parts of it remain obscure. The first requisite to an ob-
jective and scientific biography of the Founder of Christianity is
the chronological arrangement of his utterances, so that the
development of his thought may be traced. But the Evangelists
are regardless of dates. And modern historians, working on the
data they give, have succeeded very imperfectly in tracing the
action of time on the Master's life. Until historians have
advanced far beyond these preliminary difficulties, an objective
life of Jesus is out of the question.

A recent and judicious attempt to divide the life of Jesus
into periods is that of Prof. Sanday in Hastings' Dictionary of
the Bible Its weak point lies in the difficulty of bringing
into one focus the chronology of the Synoptists and that of
John. A more detailed, though less judicial, attempt in the
same direction is made in the life of Jesus in Hausrath's
work, perhaps the most vivid of the lives of Jesus which come
from authors who can stand the stress of modern criticism.
He makes the background of the life of Jesus clear, and
the personality in the foreground seems sometimes to
stand forth luminously. Whole days of the life of the Master
are restored with some degree of probability. And yet the
person whom the writer brings before us is in many ways
enigmatical and impossible. The fact is that in the recon-
struction of the life of the Master, every worthy and duly
educated writer makes some interesting and valuable contribu-
tions. But no bucket exhausts the well. Perhaps centuries
hence new lives of Jesus will be appearing, still adding to our

1 Edersheim, Life and Times of Jesus, Preface.

170 EXPLORATIO EVANGELIC A

knowledge of the Master, and still finding new depths of
meaning in his teaching.1

Thus it seems to me unquestionable that whatever gain
science and intellect may have made by the progress of
criticism, that progress has not enabled us, and probably never
will enable us, to set forth the purposes and character of our
Master in an objective light as a part of ascertained history.
Our views in regard to him must always have a strong sub-
jective and individual tinge : and however well satisfied we
may be that our views in the matter are true, we can scarcely
hope that they will seem equally true to others. Thus for all
future time we must content ourselves with mere probability in
place of the old fancied certainty, when we quote words as
spoken by him or deeds as done by him.

There is an opinion commonly current in England,
especially among the clergy, that recent investigation, and
especially the discovery of very early Christian documents, has
caused greater value to attach to the Synoptic Gospels as literal
history. Certainly the progress of learning has taken back the
dates of these Gospels, and rendered untenable some of the
speculative German constructions which referred them to the
second century.2 But the gain which thus accrues to their
historic credibility is infinitesimal. Indeed, the further back
the Fourth Gospel is carried, the greater becomes the difficulty
of constructing an actual life, such as can possibly have given
rise both to it and to the Synoptic Gospels. The question is
not one of date of origin of the Gospels, but of the method of
their construction, the kind of minds which evolved them, the
purj loses they were intended to serve.

The recent discovery of the so-called Gospel of Feter does
certainly show that our four Gospels were, in the latter part
of the second century, regarded by Christians as all of equal
authority, and used freely as materials for the construction
of fresh versions of the life of Jesus better adapted to
the tenets of various sects of heretics. Conservative critics
think that all this adds to the credibility of our Gospels ;

1 In a note to this chapter I briefly criticise the latest, ami in Bome ways tin'
best, of the lives of Jesus, M. lu'ville's.

a <in this point nearly all the great critics of the time air agreed.

57 YLE IN THE EVANGELISTS 171

but impartial consideration soon snows that the very reverse

is the case-

It clearly appears that in the second century Gospels were
valued uot as uarratives of huts, but as props of doctrines.
The Bishop Serapion, who condemned the Gospel of Peter,
did so, not because it distorted fact, hut hecause it promulgated
heresy. This was evidently the tone of mind at the time.
And the authority who would condemn the Gospel of Peter on
the ground of its unorthodoxy would probably accept the
Gospel of John if he approved its teaching. That is to say,
testimony as to the life of < 'hrist was accepted or rejected not on
historical but on theological grounds. This is precisely the
contention of the critical school. And this view could scarcely
he more concisely expressed than in the phrase of I )r. Westcott,1
" The Gospels were the results and not the foundation of the
Apostolic preaching."

The line of thought which we have been pursuing seems to
show that it is a petitio principii to base doctrine on supposed
historic fact : at all events on the history contained in our
sacred writings. For history as we have it in the New
Testament, evangelic history, is to a large extent erected on a
basis of prophecy and doctrine. How can that which is based
upon doctrine support doctrine I If the elephant rests on the
tortoise, how can the tortoise rest on the elephant ?

It must not be forgotten that in the last two chapters we
are treating the early historic documents of Christianity from
the purely objective or historical standpoint. It is not to
be expected that Christians, with their intense interest in the
life of their Master, will be able to keep their beliefs as to that
life within the narrow bounds of objective history. Faith and
imagination will outrun intellect; and every individual will
have a conception of his Master's life which will be based in a
great degree on his own spiritual experience. This is inevitable,
and it is quite defensible. The views of individuals must, how-
ever, be tested by the canons of criticism current in modern
schools of thought. And unless they endure the test, however
suitable to the individual conscience, they are not able to
survive. All then that our critical investigation attempts is

1 Introduction to the Study of the Gospels, 1860, p. 154.

172 EXPLORATIO EVANGELIC A

to furnish some sort of standard to curb the license of unfounded
historic speculation.

NOTE I
M. Albert Reville's J£sus de Nazareth

Since the preceding chapters were written I have read the
powerful and valuable work on the life of Jesus by M. Albert
ReVille.1 This book has made me alter my text in a few pas-ages ;
but it seems well to add a short note incorporating some of the
reflections to which the reading of it has led.

It seems to me that of all the lives of Jesus which I have seen
that of M. Reville is the most historic in method and the most
judicial in tone. It is a work at once thoroughly critical and
partly appreciative, and it clearly shows how far historic science
can, under existing conditions, be expected to go in establishing
an objective life of Jesus. M. Reville's successes and failures are
alike susisrestive.

As I have above remarked, it is far easier to recover the teaching
than the life of Jesus. M. Reville's account of the teaching, while
worthy of a most careful reading, does not call for special remark
in this place. There is more to be said in regard to his reconstruc-
tion of the life of Jesus. Excellent as are the method and the abili-
ties of M. Reville, he does not seem to arrive at results sufficiently
certain to invalidate the view that the life of the Master is not,
in an objective sense, recoverable, be)*ond a certain point.

Let us take a concrete example. "We find in the Synoptic
Gospels an account of the agony of Jesus in the Garden of Geth-
semane. But the same Evangelists who report to us the precise
words used by Jesus in his final appeal to the Father in
Heaven tell us at the same time that he was not with his disciples,
but at some distance from them (Luke says, a stone's cast), and that
the disciples were heavy with sloe}). It seems quite clear then
that the words and deeds of Jesus at this crisis cannot be deter
mined by any evidence which historic criticism can recognise. But
M. Reville accepts as historic the account given (with considerable
variations) by the Synoptic writers. He allows that the testimony
of the Apostles could lie under the circumstances of but little value;
but he thinks that our account may come from another witness, the
young man mentioned in Mark,-1 "Toute cette scene de ( tathsemane*
avait eu unte'moin ignore', un tout jeune homme, mi veavuricos, qui

1 Ji'sua de Nazareth •' Paris, 1897.

2 xiv. 51, "A certain young man followed with him, having a linen cloth
cast about him," etc.

STYLE IN THE EVANGELISTS 173

probablemenl passail la nuit dans le pressoir voisin." < >i" course
this is a legitimate theory, but it conveys no conviction: it is
far more probable that the whole Bcene was moulded by the
Christian consciousness of the first believers. Doubtful as is the
evidence of the sleeping Apostles, that of this unknown youth is
even less admissible in the court of history.

There is a Bimilar difficulty in regard to our accounts of the
crucifixion, and .M. Reville meets it in much the same way. It is
well known that the various accounts of the last hours of Jesus on
the cross are conflicting. And this is very natural. The Apostles
and the Galilean disciples were dispersed and in hiding. We are
told by the Synoptists that some Galilean women looked on, but it
from afar. It is even Likely that no Christian witness stood
near the cross.1 No doubt the disciples would afterwards talk with
many of the Jews who were present; but they would regard their
testimony with suspicion, and accept or reject it according to pre-
conceived views. Hence it is quite natural that the facts of the
crucifixion Bhould be beyond recovery. But M. Reville is scarcely
justified in trusting, as a witness, Simon of Cyrene, who carried the
cross: " C'est peut-etre a lui que nous devons le peu de renseigne-
ments que nous possesions sur les dernieres heures du grand
crucifie\M This clue seems to be a very untrustworthy indication to
follow in the darkness.

It must not be supposed that all, or most, of M. Re'ville's recon-
structions are made of faulty material. Thoroughly trained in
historic method, sober and impartial in judgment, he usually adheres
as closely as possible to the best established facts. Even when, as
in discussing the Resurrection, he advances views which will be
extremely repugnant to most Christians, he moves strictly within
the bounds of his craft. Yet the sober and regulated methods which
he uses seem sometimes out of place when applied to a time so full
of prodigies as that of Jesus, and to writings so full alike of sub-
jectivity and of inspiration as the Synoptic Gospels. Legitimate as
are his theories as to the course of the career of Jesus, his purposes
and actions, it does not seem likely that they will be lastingly
accepted more than those of his predecessors. In dealing with the
teaching of Jesus, we are on quite another level; and here M.
ReVille is often quite admirable.

Of late years an immense deal has been done in the historic
criticism of Herodotus. But if we carefully observe the results of
that criticism we shall find that, though much is called in question,
very few new views are established except by the discovery of new

1 The statement of the Fourth Evangelist that the mother of Jesus, with other
women and John, .stood by the cross cannot be regarded as definitely historic
(Jt'sus ib Nazareth, ii. 103).

174 EX PLO RATIO EVANGELICA

documents. In the case of the Gospel history important new
documents as }-et are not forthcoming, though the success of Messrs.
Grenfell and Hunt makes us think their discovery possible. Criti-
cism, however able and methodical, seldom succeeds in making an
acceptable narrative. It rejects much, and with reason ; but it
establishes little. Its function is rather educative than constructive.

NOTE II
M. Paul Sabatier's Vie be S. Fbanqois

Among all the great Christians who have embodied one side or
another of the life of their Master, none comes nearer to him in
essential features than Francis of Assisi. He was like the Founder
of Christianity in his gentle spirit, his boundless hive for men, his
joyful acceptance of poverty and self-denial. He was fond of
appealing, like Jesus, to the facts of the visible world, and in hearty
sympathy with life in all its forms. And he founded, like Jesus, a
society Avhich grew and spread Avith marvellous rapidity after his
death. Of course, at every point, moral and intellectual, Francis
stands on an incomparably lower level : he is the imitator, while
Jesus is the leader.

M. Paul Sabatier's Life of St. Francis of Assisi is a work at once
appreciative and critical. It is an endeavour to penetrate through
partisan bias and pious exaggeration to the real Francis. It is
followed by a careful and lucid survey of the materials for the
preceding biography.

The result is to exhibit in a clear light the fashion in which the
life-history of a great and inspired teacher takes form. We can
see a parallel to the formation of the Gospels, and trace with eyes
less dazzled by inherited bias and keen religious feeling the same
forces at work in the development of the life of the disciple as in
the life of the Master. It is noteworthy that the extant lives of
Francis are closer to being contemporary documents and the
testimony of eye-witnesses than are the I Jo-pels. Francis belongs
to ;t time far nearer to us and more within the sweep of our instru-
ments of observation. Yet the element of subjectivity in all the
written accounts of his life is extraordinary, and able authorities
differ in regard to the mosl notable points in it. There are
unsettled disputes a8 to the authenticity of his will, the reality of
the stigmata, and the character ami bearing "f some of the most
prominent of his companions. We have several works written l>y
Francis himself, and so cannot doubt as to the character of his
teaching. The general course of his lite, occupied in wandering in

STYLE IN THE EVANGELISTS 175

It;il\ and beyond, in preaching poverty and happiness, 1- clear.
Bui almost all beyond the genera] plan is involved in a mist of
miracle and marvel.

Francis died in 1226. AJmosI immediately was published thai
charming record of his life called Speculum Perfectionis ' by Brother
Leo. This work, like the Gospel of Mark, is a series of detached
sayings, with a background of incident, and reflecting a nature of
ran- beauty. The only miracles spoken of in it are the healing of
diseases, victories over Satan and the like. In the first few chaptei -
we feel the breath of controversy, and perceive that Brother Leo
was at variance with his brethren as to the interpretation of the
wishes of Francis ; hut most of the work is pure and limpid, and we
have to make but moderate allowance for the "personal equation"
of the writer. Three or four years later appeared a biography
written hy Thomas of Celano. He was appointed to the task
by Pope Gregory IX., had known Francis personally, and could
consult all the latter's most intimate friends. Vet within fifteen
years Thomas of Celano's first legend had become impossible. The
prominence there given to Flias (the vicar of the order) was almost
a scandal. The necessity of working it over and completing it
hecame clearly evident at the chapter of Genoa (1244). 2

One of the lives produced by this rising demand was that of the
three Companions of Francis, which was written in 1246. It is a
lovely work, full of charming anecdote, and curiously free from the
miraculous element. But as it has come down to us it is very
incomplete, and its bias is obvious. " It is at least as much a
panegyric of poverty as a history of St. Francis." Soon after, Celano
brought out a second and revised edition of his biography. This
work is described by M. Sabatier as in every page reflecting the
contemporary history of the order. The events of the life of
Francis have taken a didactic form and become comments on his
rule. History has become the vehicle of certain practical purposes.

In 1263 was completed the life by St. Bonaventura, who wrote
as minister-general of the order, and in the first instance for edifica-
tion. By this time, only thirty-seven years after the death of
Francis, his story had become laden with a multitude of miracles,
but the character of the founder had begun to fade away. M.
Sabatier writes:'5 "YVhile in Celano there are the large lines of a
soul's history, a sketch of the affecting drama of a man who attains
to the conquest of himself, with Bonaventura all this interior
action disappears before divine interventions." "We see that St.

1 Put together ami edited by M. Paul Sabatier in 1898 ; translated into
English by Mr. Sebastian Evans.

- Sabatier. Sixth edition, p. Ix. Eng. trans, p. 373.
8 P. lxxxvii. Trans, p. 397.

176 EXPLORATIO EVANGELICA

Francis was a saint, a very great saint, since he performed an
innumerable quantity of miracles, great and small ; but we feel very
much as if we had been going through a shop of objects of piety."
So well pleased was Bonaventura with his own biography that he
made a strenuous effort to destroy all others ; though fortunately
his success in this endeavour was very incomplete.

Certain of the early historians of the Franciscan order deal with
the biography of its Founder. M. Sabatier finds the chronicle of
Clareno, written about 1330, very interesting as preserving to us
much of the flavour of the early life of the Friars. " Clareno x and
his friends not only adhered to the general belief of the order
that Francis had been a great saint, but to this conviction they
added the persuasion that the work of the Stigmatised could only
be continued by men who should attain to his moral stature, to
which men might arrive through the power of faith and love."

Finally, we have that beautiful work, the Fioretti of St. Francis,
written by 1385.2 Here we have a work of literary rather than of
historic value, to which it is hopeless to apply the methods of
critical history. " Yet 3 that which gives these stories an inestim-
able worth is what for want of a better term we may call their
atmosphere. They are legendary, transformed, exaggerated, false
even if you please, but they give us with a vivacity and intensity
of colouring something that we shall search for in vain elsewhere,
the surroundings amid which St. Francis lived."

Such is a bare record of a process which lasted 1G0 years,
whereby a human life was gradually idealised, and the events
of a life-history used as material to be shaped into the construction
of an order, or the erection of a body of teaching. It would be
possible to compare it stage by stage with the development of the
Christian history. The Gospels belong to a far more advanced
stage of idealised biography than the life by Celano and the
chronicles of the Three Companions. Yet the comparison might help
us to see how necessarily the practical needs, the affections, and the
hopes of men must always interfere to distort the sober records of
history, in the case of all those who have greatly moved mankind.
We are fairly well acquainted with the teaching of Francis. We
reject his alleged miracles, and regard parts of his life as so far over-
laid with legend and fancy as scarcely to be recoverable by sober
history. Our verdict must be the same in the case of Jesus ; though,
as we have none of his writings, and no biography for some forty
years after his death, we are in a far worse position historically than
in the case of Francis.

1 Sabatier, y. ciii. Trans, p. ill.

- Translated in the Temple Classics by Mr. 'I'. Arnold.

:; Sabatier, p. cviii. Trans. ]>. 416.

CHAPTER XV

JESUS AS MESSIAH

li appears, as will be shown in later chapters, that most oi
the ideas of mature Christianity existed, at least in rudimen-
tary form, before the Christian era. And after the Christian
era they developed usually on lines more or less divergent from
the teaching of Jesus himself. Does it not then seem that a
Bmall place is left in Christianity for the historic Founder? It
is evident that we are approaching a point at which we must
move with caution.

It is certain that the natural and inevitable tendency of
historic criticism is to depreciate the influence exerted by
personalities on movements. There is nothing so unacceptable
to science as a break in the line of development. Probably
one of these days some writer who is over-educated in the
methods of science will succeed in writing a history of
Christianity wherein the Founder is almost omitted. And to
many readers such a work will probably appear to be the crown
of historic research. But here, as in most things, the middle
course is the safe course. The extreme tendencies of criticism
are almost as likely to lead us into error as is the want of a
critical spirit. We must refuse to follow them blindly.

In fact, the whole of early Christianity was steeped in the
personality of Jesus. No doctrine was taken into the fabric of
the faith until it had been baptized into Christ, marked with
the cross of the suffering and cleansed with the saving blood
of the Founder. Doctrines, like the early Christians them-
selves, were buried with Christ, in order that they might rise

178 EXPLORATIO EVANGELIC A

like him into newness of life. It is truths such as these which
an over-critical spirit is apt to overlook, yet which are really
of unmeasured importance. It is the glory and the strength
of Christianity to be able to point to a historic origin, and to
have ever open to it the appeal to the Founder. In some ages
of the Church, notably in the age of the Gnostics, and when
the Arian controversy was raging, there has appeared a great
danger that Christian belief might float loose of its historic
moorings and wander vaguely amid the currents of an endless
sea of doctrine. On the other hand, all the glorious fruits of the
Eeformation sprang from a reversion to the records of the
origin of Christianity. If there were laid on us the necessity
of choosing between the Jesus of history and the Christ of
Christian doctrine, the choice would be by no means easy.
But we are not compelled to surrender either the one or the
other. We are compelled, especially in Protestant countries,
to re-survey the origins of the Christian religion. And sound
criticism does undoubtedly compel all of us to give up much
that we would perhaps have wished to retain in regard to the
Jesus of history. But there is much left which historic criti-
cism will always be unable to touch. If there appears to be
in the recorded doings and sufferings of the rounder a good
deal of ethical construction, we may, on the other hand, feel
with an exhilarating confidence that at all events we possess
main points of his teaching drawn in broad and clear lines.
The profound originality of Christianity remains, though it is
not so independent as has hitherto commonly been supposed of
pre-existing material. It shows its originality rather by the
power of absorbing and transforming than by making quite a
new departure.

From the moment of the death of Jesus, theologians have
been so busy in idealising and exalting him, in spreading about
him mists through which he looks more and more gigantic, and
less and less clear, that it is extremely hard for history to
resume her rights. And it is quite impossible that she should
even try to resume them without appearing irreverent and
iconoclastic, without chilling the fervour of the enthusiastic,
and disturbing the faith of the pious. Only of this we may
be quite sure, that there is no phase of the history of the past

/ESI rS AS MESSIA II 1 7g

which the new scientific spirit will Leave unattempted. If
reverence and faith are to persist, they must meet the full
shock of historic investigation and become acclimatised to it.

Almost all thinkers are agreed that Jesus was an unique
religious genius. Those who believe in the possibility of the
inspiration of man by <!<»d will allow that ho was inspired in
a higher and fuller sense than even the greatest of his followers.
It is of the nature of inspiration that the higher and fuller it
becomes the deeper it penetrates, beneath what is accidental
and peculiar in him who is inspired, to the profound depths
of common human nature. The really inspired man speaks
not only to his countrymen and contemporaries, but to men of
all nations and all time.

Nevertheless, history has continuity ; and every man as
seen in history has a place in that continuity. He belongs to
a definite race, and speaks a particular language ; and not only
this, but the intellectual and moral forms taken by his life and
teaching are derived from the age and race in which he appears.
Religious genius, like other genius, is shown not by taking an
entirely new departure, but by raising to a higher level existing
beliefs and institutions, by turning all that it touches to gold.

Thus for any historic criticism of the teaching of Jesus, a
careful preparation is necessary. We have to make up our
minds, first in regard to the psychology of inspiration and the
religious life ; and second, as to the surroundings, mental and
physical, amid which the life of Jesus was spent. We thus
acquire a defined point of view, and call in the aid of the
historic imagination to discern the figure of the Master working
according to laws partly known, and seen against a background
discovered by study.

For any complete reconstruction of the teaching of Jesus,
the first necessity, as we have already observed, would be to
arrange our accounts of it in chronological sequence. It may
be doubted how far this is possible with the existing material.
The task has been recently attempted by many able writers :
Wendt, Reville, Estlin Carpenter, and a host of others. But
it cannot be said to be accomplished with any finality. We
may perhaps distinguish two periods in the Master's life : first,
a time of joyous serenity and unclouded hope ; and second,

180 EX PLC RATIO EVANGELICA

a time when a temporary failure of his mission, culminating
in his own death, dwelt before his eyes. But yet it is scarcely
possible to separate the teaching of the earlier from that of the
later period. And the main principles of it appear to be the
same throughout. I shall therefore confine myself to an
attempt to portray in bold outlines what I conceive to have
been the general character of the teaching, as it appears alike
in the logia incorporated in the Sermon on the Mount, in the
Parables, and in the dispersed sayings recorded in the Gospels.
The Fourth Gospel does not come in. Nor can we venture to
press the testimony with regard to the last days at Jerusalem,
about which there soon gathered so much accretion. But the
general character of the teaching of the Prophet of Galilee is
not beyond recovery.

In case of a large part of the sayings of Jesus as recorded
by the Synoptic writers, doubts of their genuineness can hardly
be justified. These short and pregnant sentences were probably
often repeated by the Master ; they were very easy to re-
member, and they probably became in the lifetime of Jesus
part of the mental furniture of his Apostles. To suppose that
they were invented is to suppose that there was among the
companions of Jesus a greater and more original religious genius
than himself. They have all the air of being what they profess
to be : the utterances of a great and inspiring teacher, spiritual
views of a new Jewish and yet cosmopolitan kind, appropriate
to the time and place. No doubt this is a subjective, and
therefore a dangerous, criterion. Nevertheless, we venture
to say that any person of trained literary judgment who begins
by making himself thoroughly familiar with the best attested
and least doubtful sayings of Jesus will soon find that they
have a flavour which is all their own, and will soon lay aside
any doubts with which he may have started as to their being
the utterances of an unique historic personality. Of course, t lie
recorded sayings of Jesus, even in the Synoptic Gospels, include
many interpolations, and much that has been misunderstood
and misreported. And on the other hand it maybe that some
of the sayings of Jesus, especially in the version of Matthew,
may have grown in the inspired experience <>f the early
disciples in breadth and in spirituality, so that what was

J/CSCS .IS MESS /AH i^i

uttered t<> meet a particular occasion developed in the conscious-
ness of the community into a broad statement of religious
truth. But there is certainly a historic nucleus, even if the
nucleus is surrounded by much th.it is doubtful and uncertain.

If we endeavour steadily t<> purge our minds of the pre-
possessions which arise from the later history and the practical
working of the Christian faith, and to realise vividly the con-
ditions which existed in Judaea in the first century, we can
scarcely fail to see that there is one question which to the
followers and the contemporaries of Jesus completely over-
shadowed all others. People did not ask whether Jesus was
of one substance with the Father ; they did not ask whether the
religion which he taught was absolute or not; they did not
discuss the nature of a saving faith in him. The question
which agitated them was this, Was he or was he not the
Messiah \ His friends proclaimed him as such ; he himself
•■pted the claim; his enemies put him to death because of
it. This is the essential fact of the whole history.

Jesus appearing in history as a Jew, born in Galilee ! in
the reign of Caesar Augustus, his life and his teaching cannot
possibly be understood, save in relation to such a background.
And history shows that, at the time, the religious life of the
Jews centred mainly in the expectation of a coming deliverer.
Suetonius speaks of a widespread feeling in Syria that a great
conqueror was about to arise there. And the Jewish history
during the first century of our era is coloured by the rise and
the suppression of pretenders to the Messiahship, or at least to
prophetic inspiration.

It was, humanly speaking, impossible that one who at
that moment came forward as a teacher sent from God, with
the consciousness of a great mission, should fail to put to
himself the question whether he was the promised Messiah.
All writers, probably, are agreed that Jesus claimed to be
the Messiah ; but many writers think that he did so only in
the latter part of his career. The passage in Matthew? in
which Jesus speaks in warm praise of Peter for first
realising that he was the Messiah, is especially relied on by

1 The story of the birth at Bethlehem is without historic probability. See
Chapter XIX." 2 xvi. 17.

I S3 EXPLORATIO EVANGELIC A

these writers. It is, however, clear, from many Synoptic
passages, that Jesus was very anxious that his claim to the
dignity should not be openly spoken of. Wendt thinks that
Jesus from his baptism had learned to think of himself as the
Messiah, but for good reasons was anxious to remain for a
time unknown in that light. Historically, the question can
scarcely be solved. Even the Synoptic Gospels have little
claim to chronological sequence of events and words. We
only know that sooner or later Jesus not only regarded himself
as the Messiah, but was also willing to be regarded as such by
his disciples, and even strangers. The facts are less obscure
as to the light in which Jesus regarded his own Messiahship,
when he did lay claim to it. The nature of his inspiration
forbade him to regard the Messianic office in the narrow and
national manner of those about him. Turning from what was
outward to what was inward, as he always did, he saw that
the function of the true Messiah must be, not to overthrow
the Bom an dominion and establish a new empire in its place,
but to turn the heart of Israel to God, to bring in a state of
society in which the will of God should be done in earth as
in heaven. And since Jesus felt that precisely this was the
mission on which he himself was sent into the world, he could
scarcely fail to see that his claim to the Messianic office was
clear.

It has been seen by critical historians that it was towards
the end of the career of Jesus that he more clearly perceived
that the path to the realisation of this mission must lie through
suffering and death, such as the later Isaiah speaks of as the
portion of the chosen servant of God. In spite of the
warnings which, according to our authorities, Jesus gave to
his disciples, it does not appear that even up to the day of
the crucifixion they were able to lay aside their belief in the
outward and visible triumph of their Master. And when the
actual events had shattered that hope, and it became evident
that their Messiah was born to suffer, they began to look for
his speedy return in the clouds of heaven, to judge mankind
and to set up on earth the reign of the saints.

At this point we reach a great historical difficulty. The
life of Jesus as recorded in our Gospels was, as above shown,

JESUS AS MESSIAH 183

in a great degree constructed out of Messianic prophecy: in
particular the Isaiun utterances. In this case how is it
possible to discriminate betweeD actual deeds and words of
Jesus in the line of the [saian prophecies, and deeds and words
attributed to Jesus because they wen- in that line, which
nevertheless really came from the Christian consciousness?
This difficulty is, strictly speaking, insurmountable. Yet
it would be an excessive scepticism which would deny that
the actual life of Jesus was in its general character consonant
with the sublime poetry of Isaiah : a scepticism which would
suppose that effects happened without causes, and that the
disciples of Jesus were more original and more spiritual than
their master. We must in all reason suppose that the
master set the example which the disciples followed.

The keynote of the whole ministry of Jesus is given
in that passage of the Third Gospel l in which Jesus, in the
synagogue of his native Nazareth, is represented as setting
forth the nature of his mission. After reading one of the
most striking and characteristic passages of the Isaian
prophecy, beginning " The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the
poor," Jesus went on to say, " This day is this scripture
fulfilled in your ears." He is said to have thus claimed
a divine mission, and at the same time proclaimed in what
sense he interpreted the call. In the Third Gospel this
discourse is rightly or wrongly represented as having taken
place at the beginning of the career of Jesus, soon after
his baptism and temptation. Perhaps of all his recorded
utterances it is the most suggestive. He thus proclaimed
that he came not to found a kingdom but to establish a
society, to turn from outward success to triumph in the hearts
of men, to aim at no victory of his own will among the nations,
but at a life of doing and suffering the will of God.

The same note is sounded in a very characteristic part of
the First and Third Gospels, the narrative of the temptation.
This narrative, if authentic, must be based upon an account
given by Jesus himself to his disciples, though whether it was
meant as a parable we cannot bo sure. Here again we have the

1 Luke iv. 16-22.

1 84 EX FLORA TIO £ V ANGELIC A

deliberate turning from what is without to what is within,
from visible marvel and wide sway of nations to following God
in conduct and trusting his word. And in the Fourth Gospel,
where the author works with much freer hand, a point which
he tries to make clear by constant repetition is the contrast
between the interpretation of Messianic prophecy admitted by
the Jews, and even by the twelve disciples, and that which
was accepted by Jesus himself.

Jesus was surrounded by Jews only. And it is impossible
that anything can have so completely dominated the thought
of all about him as did the doubt, the hope, the belief that in
him appeared the promised leader sent by God to put on a new
level the life of the despised and persecuted Jewish race.
The author of the Fourth Gospel is constantly insisting, with
almost wearisome iteration, on the fact that the disciples of
Jesus were very far from understanding their Lord. Thus
we cannot venture to say that we know at all fully to what
extent Jesus shared the opinions of those about him. But it
is of the essence of great genius to penetrate beneath the local
and temporary to the eternal human basis. Sophocles wrote
for the Athenians, but his works belong to us all. Shake-
speare thought of his contemporaries, but his plays appeal as
much to modern Germans and liussians as they did to the
English of the time of Elizabeth. In the same way, whether
or not Jesus was consciously addressing future ages and distant
countries, he penetrated so deeply beneath the surface of contem-
porary life and feeling that he reached the permanent and
eternal in men whether of his own time or any other. His
words, if primarily addressed to Jewish ears, were really directed
to all in all ages who are capable of being inspired by the love
of goodness.

One of the most notable points in the Synoptic discourses
is the way in which Jesus accepts the severe monotheism of
the Jews, and yet transforms it by his genius, not indeed in
the least in the direction of the modified Tritheism which
became dominant in the Christian Church, but in the direction
in which it had been actually moving among the Jews during
their history. During tin- Babylonian Captivity, and in the
ages which followed, the .Jewish people gradually realised a

JESUS AS MESSIAH

conception of God which waa far nobler than that of the
Greeks 01 of any ancient nation, and which is the great and
lasting gift of Israel to the world. They attained it not merely
by the intellect, but by an inspiration which fused the powers
of heart and will. Their religion was not one of mere
acquiescence in the divine order, but of passionate longing for
a nearer approach to God. In the Psalms we find the noblest
exposition of this high ami divine enthusiasm. And the
language of the Psalms has been down to this day perhaps the
readiest vehicle for the longings and aspirations of the souls to
whom God was the object of earnest love and passionate
adoration. In all pre-Christian literature they stand alone in
the religious aspect.

From the Synoptic Gospels it would seem that the Founder
of Christianity lived largely in the atmosphere of the Psalms,
and constantly found in their language an outlet for the divine
passion which filled him. Hut his unique inspiration led him
even beyond the power of expression which is found in the
Psalmists. His conception of God was loftier, more tender,
more human than even that of the poets of Israel. There is
one phrase in particular which seems to have been constantly
in his mouth, " Your, or my, father in heaven." Dwelling on
this phrase in constant discourse, and living in it, Jesus raised
to another level even the highest Jewish idea of God. He
taught a faith in God which is essentially a " feeling of son-
ship," a confidence that man may approach his Maker, not
without awe, but without fear; that lie may move forward in
life with bold and confident steps, feeling sure that all he
meets will be of divine ordination, that nothing which he
meets will be unforeseen by God, or really harmful.

This was undoubtedly one of the most fundamental parts
of the earthly teaching of the Founder of Christianity. And
it was of the greatest novelty in the history of the world,
in spite of the noble approaches towards it which may be
found alike in the Hebrew Psalms, and in the highest Pagan
writings, such as the Hymn of Cleanthes. For Jesus not
merely gave the teaching forth, but he embodied it in his life,
and brought it down to the level of the most ordinary persons.
Starting, apparently, not from the views of any school of Scribes,

1 36 EXP LO RATIO EVANGELIC A

but from the facts of the world about us and the deepest truths
of human consciousness, he laid down the plan of a religion
based on love between God and man, and fitted for acceptance
by the whole human race.

No greater doctrine than that of the divine fatherhood has
ever been preached among men. Yet it is liable, like all great
doctrines, to perversion and to caricature. The fact is that it
cannot be understood save where a high and stern view of the
parental relation is accepted. The father in the mind of Jesus
is a father who thinks more of goodness than of happiness, who
will make no terms with neglect or ingratitude, who does not
hesitate to chastise. The modern Christian often tries to think
of God as like a weak and indulgent parent, who shields his
child from all the discipline of life, and encourages him to do
his own will. And the difference between the Master's view
and that of the degenerate disciple is that the former may by
faith be reconciled with the course of life and with experience,
while the latter cannot, but must in the long-run break down
in practice, giving way to discontent, irreligion, misery, and
despair. Even the parable of the Prodigal Son, though it goes
to the verge of unreality, does not cross that verge.

The close relationship between God and man found, for the
disciples of Jesus, and probably for Jesus himself, its best basis
in the consciousness of the Master himself. With him the
sense of sonship was abiding and fundamental ; and hence it
was possible for his disciples through him to attain to it. That
which was revealed to him for the first time in history became
a possession of his followers and of his Church through all
time. This truth is perhaps more completely realised and
more fully set forth in the Fourth Gospel than in the more
historical Synoptic writers.

The relation of man to man was in the teaching of Jesus
based upon the relation of man to God. His humanism was
of an intensely religious cast. Of course a feeling of the
sacredness of a common humanity was by no means new to
the world. Even the intense narrow patriotism of the Jews
had in some degree given way at various times to a desire that
all nations should share the blessing of Israel. But it was the
Stoics in particular who had spread in select circles the idea

JESUS AS MESSIAH 187

of a sacred tie binding man to man, and of the dignity of the
Life partaken of by men. But the "enthusiasm of humanity"
which Jesus bequeathed to his followers was something very
different from this. The slave who was a philosopher could
rise to the highest human dignity. l>ut how few slaves were
philosophers. And for the mass a place of inferiority and of
contempt was quite suitable. Through the Meditations of
Marcus Aurelius, in spite of his studied modesty, there breathes
a spirit of moral and intellectual scorn. But though philosophy
is out of the reach of the many, closeness to God, and an intimate
dependence on his will, is within the reach of the humblest, is
indeed more common among the poor and the uneducated than
in higher circles. This kinship to God was in the Christian
view the central fact of human nature, and in the light of it
all human nature was translated and glorified. " Inasmuch as
ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye
have done it unto me," is the very secret of the Christian love
for man, which, when once planted by the Founder, never
wholly died down in the Church. In all ages there have been
Christians who have nursed the leper, shared the shame of the
outcast, boldly welcomed torture and death, not out of a mere
love for man, but out of passion for the divine element in man.

In modern days the schools of secularity have tried to raise
the mere desire to promote the happiness of one's neighbour
into the position of the mainspring of virtue. But have they
succeeded as Jesus succeeded with his teaching of love for
man arising out of love for God ?

There is a remarkable phrase, which Jesus seems to have
applied frequently to himself, the phrase " son of man." As
it is quite out of the line of thought of early Christians, it
seems almost certain that the use belongs to the Master him-
self. It is a phrase familiar to readers of the Old Testament.
Ezekiel is frequently addressed by the Lord as " son of man "
when messages are given him for Israel. In Psalms viii. and
cxliv., " What is man, that thou art mindful of him ? and the
son of man, that thou visitest him ? " the phrases " man " and
" son of man " are clearly of identical meaning. But in Daniel
(vii. 13) we read of one like a son of man coming with the clouds
of heaven. And it appears that from this collocation the phrase

EXPL0RAT10 EVANGELIC A

" son of man " gained some Messianic interpretation, and was
generally so understood by the Jews of the first century.

If Jesus had spoken of himself merely as " a son of man,"
we might have supposed that he was claiming to stand like
Ezekiel as a prophet, or to have adopted in extreme modesty
the language of the Psalms. But the phrase which he com-
monly uses, " the son of man," may perhaps have another
meaning. It may show that he claimed in some way to
represent the human race.

Jesus is quoted by the Synoptists as speaking of himself
as the son of man when he puts forth special claims, as to be
Lord of the Sabbath, or to be judge of mankind. The humble
sound of the title contrasts strangely with the exalted functions
claimed for its owner.

These passages may be divided into two classes. In the
first class we may place the passages of an apocalyptic character,
in which Jesus is represented as coming in the clouds of
heaven as judge of mankind. Of these passages we speak
more at length in another chapter. They cannot fairly be
taken as strictly authentic. And here the passage in Daniel
would naturally serve to mould the phrases in which the
Master was spoken of. In the second class we must place
several very remarkable phrases in which Jesus claims as the
son of man high prerogative, to be lord of the Sabbath, and to
have the power to forgive sins. It is not unnatural that
ordinary readers should regard these passages as proofs of what
they would call the " divinity of Jesus." But to read the
passages thus is to invert their meaning. For it is not as the
embodiment of God, but as the representative of man, that
Jesus in these cases claims authority. The son of man is
lord of the Sabbath because the Sabbath was made for man,
and not man for the Sabbath. The son of man has power to
forgive sin, because the forgiveness of sin, though essentially ;i
divine prerogative! may be sometimes exercised by man. In
Isaiah (xl. 2) the prophet is bidden to proclaim to Zion that
her iniquity is pardoned. Nathan ('2 Sam. xii. 1 3) says to
David, "The Lord also hath put away thy sin." But in the
Gospels we find stronger phrases. No one thing is more
strongly insisted on in the Gospels than the duty of men to

JESUS AS MESSIAH 189

jive those who sin against them, when repentant. In Matt
wiii. 18 Jesus is represented aa declaring to the body of his
disciples, not the Apostles only, that the power of forgiving
sins rests with them. To such teaching the phrase, "The son
of man hath power 011 earth to forgive sins," comes as a con-
summation. Whether or not this was the actual teaching of
Jesus, it seems clear that it is thus that his words were
interpreted by the Evangelists. The appeal from earth to
heaven is not excluded. In his last hours Jesus is represented
as saying of his executioners, " Father, forgive them," not " I
forgive you." But the court of first instance, so to speak, for
the forgiveness of sins seems to be fixed on earth.

It is difficult to expound the phrase son of man as used
by Jesus without falling into the language of philosophy, which
would lie quite foreign to the lines of thought which belong to
the Master. If we say that he claimed to embody the ideal
man or the idea of man, we use Platonic language. If we say
that he stood as high priest for the human race, we fall into
the way of the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, and do
not use the language of the earliest Christianity. If we say
that he represented humanity as perfected and so made divine,
we speak more in the fashion of Buddhism than of Christianity.
But of these interpretations the first is more consonant to the
Jewish genius than the others.

In contrast to these lofty claims, we may turn to a number
of passages in the Gospels in which Jesus seems to be uncon-
scious of this personal dignity, and to exalt, not himself but
rather his message, his word or his teaching. It is not those
who call him Lord, but those who obey his word, who will be
justified in the last day. It is the message which he utters
which will test men and divide them as sheep from goats.
Those who hear his word and receive it are to him as brothers
and sisters, nearer than his own mother to his heart. Often
when he speaks of his message, Jesus seems to set aside his
personality altogether, or to regard his person as a mere
channel by which the word of God is made known to the
world. Between this eclipse of personality and the strong-
assertion of personality which is prominent in other passages
the mere critic may find contradiction. Some may think that

i go EXPLORATIO EVANGELICA

the two phases belong to different parts of the life of Jesus.
We would rather consider the phenomenon as a fresh paradox
of the divine life, a new illustration of the profound saying
that he that loses his life shall find it. A personality merged
in the divine will comes forth, not injured, but more powerful
and commanding in relation to other men. One passage of
the Gospel introduces this paradox with an abruptness which
is startling. Jesus is represented as saying (Matt. xi. 28),
" Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I
will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me ;
for I am meek and lowly of heart." Here we have a sublime
assertion of personal dignity, an offer to mankind proclaimed
from a level utterly above them, and at the same moment a
profession of total self-renunciation. Yet surely, however para-
doxical the phrase may sound, every word of it is justified in
the Christian experience. It is not uninstructive to compare
the saying of Francis,1 " The Lord hath called me by the way
of simplicity and humility, and this way hath he pointed out
to me in truth for myself, and for them that are willing to
believe me and to imitate me."

It is a notable fact that whereas the Jesus of the Synoptics
speaks frequently of himself under the designation son of man,
he never directly applies to himself the title son of God. At
the same time he does in a less direct manner claim the title,
by continually speaking of God as his Father. And it is
notable, as the commentators point out, that in speaking to his
disciples he never refers to God as our Father, but either as my
Father or your Father. The beginning of the Lord's prayer
furnishes of course no exception to this rule : for there the
Master is not praying himself, but teaching the disciples how
t<> pray. If, then, we are to suppose that the Synoptic writers
are accurate in this matter, we must conclude that Jesus
meant to imply that his own sonship to God was closer and
more sacred than could be that of the disciples. A very
remarkable phrase, found in Matthew and Luke, must here be
cited, "All things have been delivered unto me of my Father;
ami no man knoweth the Son save the Father ; neither doth
any man know the Father save the Son, and lie to whomsoever
1 The Mirrtn of Perfection, trans, p. 120.

JESUS AS MESSIAH 191

the Son willeth to reveal him." In this passage something
closely like the Logos doctrine is put into the mouth of Jesus.
But it stands by itself; and it would be very rash to regard it
in its present form as authentic. Apart from this passage, and
from Pauline and Johannine developments, our evidence suffices
to show that Jesus claimed a sonship which was unique, but
does not furnish us with an explanation of the claim. Com-
mentators therefore, as is natural, differ widely in their
interpretations. Some think that Jesus claimed only a
Messianic sonship. Some regard him as claiming an ethical
relationship to God of a sublime and unique character. Others
venture into metaphysics, and found upon the words of Jesus
some kind of doctrine of the Trinity. The evidence is
probably insufficient for the establishment in a satisfactory
fashion of any of these views.

CHAPTEli XVI

THE ETHICS OF JESUS

We have already seen that the main features of the teaching
of Jesus are recoverable. It would be quite unnecessary
scepticism to doubt that the logia embodied in the Gospel of
Matthew do convey to us in the main the actual teaching of
the Master. This teaching may be best ranged under three
heads : the legislation, the paradoxes, and the parables of Jesus.

Though it was not primarily Christian ethics which made
in the world the fortune of the Church, yet it may well be
doubted whether with a less pure code of morals her battle
would have been won. There are now in Europe various
revolutionary and nihilistic schools which bear a superficial
resemblance to primitive Christianity ; but they differ from
it in the essential point, that whereas early Christianity
tightened the laws of morality, these schools relax them. Es-
pecially in regard to the relations of the sexes, there is an
astonishing contrast between the ideas of the earliest Church
and the ideas of the partisans of the Revolution. It is scarcely
possible to exaggerate the importance of this distinction.

The morality of the earliest Christians beyond doubl goes
back to the Founder. It is impossible to suppose any other
origin for such legislation as thai of the Sermon on the Mount.
It has been said that nearly all the ethical precepts of Jesus
may be paralleled from the writings of Greek Philosophers and
Jewish Rabbis; yet as a whole it is of surprising originality.
There is some historic risk in holding the Jesus of history
responsible for all the teaching contained in the early chapters

THE ETHICS OF JESUS 193

oi Matthew. It is impossible to suppose that the Galilean
bing of the Master could pass from mouth to mouth and
endure the alchemy of the Christian conscience and experience
for thirty or forty years without becoming in Borne degree
transmuted But the interpretation which we find in Matthew
resembles that in Murk, which gives us the most advantageous
point we ean hope to reach in our quest of the Founder's
teaching. At any rate the First Gospel brings us immeasurably
nearer to historic tradition than does the Fourth.

The ethical doctrine of Jesus is the very centre of his
teaching. There can be little doubt that here was one of the
secrets of his enormous personal influence. For what he
taught was so closely intermingled with his life and action,
that the teaching seemed to be a part of the character. Also
we may say with confidence that we possess at all events the
main features of that teaching. The Gospels, because they
contain it, have been, and still are, a frequent source of
the revivals of religion which from time to time come to stir
the stagnant waters of religious convention. We have to
speak, however slightly, first of the leading principles of the
ethics of Jesus ; and second, of the more detailed legislation
which is contained in the Sermon on the Mount.

From the psychological point of view, the noteworthy
feature of the original Christian ethics is the merging of
morality in religion. The teaching in the Synoptic Gospels is
that virtue and vice, good and evil, are not qualities dependent
upon intellect nor upon knowledge. They may be shown as well
by the unlearned as by the wise and prudent. And they do
not consist in adherence to any outward and visible standard,
but in the right attitude of heart and will. It is not properly
action which is right or wrong, but the thought and intention
which impelled to the action. This is the inwardness which
is so marked a feature of the teaching of Jesus. It is not to
be seen of men that his followers should strive, but to please
the eyes of the Father who sees in secret. If the virtue of
Christians shines out in the world, it should be by no intention
of shining. But as a candle when it is ignited cannot help
giving light, so a life which is kindled must shine out in the
world and in society.

13

1 94 EX PL OR A TIO E VA NGELICA

The good and acceptable condition of heart and life must
be attained, if attained at all, by a relation to the will of God :
no merely passive relation, but an active co-operation whereby
man becomes a child of the Father in Heaven. It becomes
his object to look at men as God looks at them, and to work
for them as God works. But God reveals himself to man in
more ways than one. He is revealed in outward nature, in
the beauty of the flower and the joyousness of the bird, in the
succession of sunshine and rain, and in the giving of fruit-
ful seasons. These things men may see all around them, and
should strive to bring their lives into harmony with them.
But God is revealed not only in what is without, but also to
the heart and conscience of those who draw near to him in
spirit and in truth. And God also reveals himself in the lives
of the good, which we see, and bless the heavenly giver of such
lives. Nor can it be fairly doubted that Jesus claimed a
special inspiration, so that his words and deeds more nearly
represented the Heavenly Father than those of any of the sons
of men.

The sum of goodness, according to this teaching, is to be
in right relations towards the Father in Heaven, to act as he
acts in the world, to follow his guidance in the heart, to merge
self in the sense of a divine presence, to do not our own will,
but the will of him that sent us. Thus one loves God with
heart and soul and strength. And thus one loves men as also
children of God, and so brethren, as partakers of the same
inspiration and sent to the world for the same purpose. From
harmony with God flows in this world peace and serene happi-
ness, in spite of persecution and death, and the issue is an
eternal life which nothing can injure, but which abides as a
heavenly treasure, while all earthly things fade and pass.

This ethical attitude is reflected in many sublime sayings of
the Sermon on the Mount. And it is embodied in what is
certainly the most authentic utterance of Jesus which we
possess, the Lord's Prayer. This prayer contains but six
petitions, but three of them are expressions of desire that God's
will may be done on earth, his name hallowed, his rule uni-
versal, so that earth may lie a revelation of Heaven. This
shows to what a degree the principle of the relation, of the

THE ETHICS OF JESUS 195

possible harmony, between the will of God and that of man
lies at the foundation of Christianity. This principle is the
alchemy which has transformed all existing religion, and made
a great gulf of separation between the ancient and the Christian
world. Such seems to me the root-principle of the ethics of
Jesus, however slightly and imperfectly I may have ex-
pressed it.

In the Synoptic discourses Jesus dwells constantly and
emphatically on the analogy between the revelation of nature
and that of consciousness. The Creator and Sustainer of the
world is declared to be also the kind and loving Father of
men. And many analogies are pointed out between the facts
of the material world and the laws of human life and the
moral world. All the processes of nature, rightly understood,
are lessons to prove that the same Heavenly Power lies at the
root of the physical and the moral world. These two worlds
are part of the same universe, and subject to similar laws.
Jesus attained to a knowledge of God through his own inspired
consciousness, but when he looked abroad, he saw in the world
the working of the same kindly and orderly Power which lies
at the basis of the highest human nature.

One finds, indeed, in our records of the life of Jesus, traces
of another view : a view which regards the visible world as
under the power of Satan, and wholly opposed to the kingdom
of light. In the narrative of the temptation, Satan is represented
as ruling in the visible world. And in the Fourth Gospel he
is spoken of as the prince of this world. Whether there was
really in the teaching of Jesus any element of this kind, it is
not easy to determine. But such a view is singularly out of
harmony with the teaching of the Sermon on the Mount. And
on the other hand it is natural that, when the infant Church
was struggling to found an invisible kingdom of God amid
opposition of all kinds, many of the Christian teachers should
drift into the belief that the forces of the visible world, both
physical and social, were in the hands of the Powers of Evil.
This view has left many and profound traces in Christian feel-
ing and belief. And it is by no means extinct in our days.
The view that a good God is the author of all things, and the
view that the visible world is in opposition to the God of the

1 96 EX PL ( )RA 770 E VA NGELICA

spirit have probably both always existed in the Church. And
very probably they will both always exist, since each seems to
be directly based upon experience. To some thinkers the one
view, and to some thinkers the other, will be commended by
the course of their lives and their natural bent. Perhaps
every one of us hovers and hesitates at times between the two
views. But it was the Gnostics, like Marcion with his two
deities of Creation and of Redemption, who chiefly maintained
the inherent badness of the world. The Christian Church,
though it could neither deny nor explain the existence of evil
in the world, yet tried hard to remain true to the belief in a
beneficent Creator.

In any case it is essentially Christian doctrine that things
invisible are of a higher order than things visible, that man is
not a mere offshoot of nature, but prior to nature and above it.
To Jesus, as the greatest of idealists, there could scarcely be a
question which, in order of importance and dignity/came first :
man or the world. It was for man that the world was made,
and physical nature was merely part of the abode contrived
for him, part of the means of education which were to fit him
for the service of God. Not only did the Creator of the world
make man in his own image, but the Father and Friend of
man made the world for him to dwell in, and organised it for
high spiritual and moral ends.

The more detailed legislation of Jesus is also to be found
in the long discourse in Matthew. In form it is a modifica-
tion, a strengthening, a spiritualising, of the precepts of the
Jewish law. Of these precepts some are superseded ; others
are retained, but put in a new light. For example, the com-
mandments of Moses forbade murder and adultery : Jesus, in
accord with the principle already stated, forbade the motions
of the will which lead to these, anger against a brother, or the
toleration of unchaste thought in the presence of a woman.
In the same way the Jewish practices of prayer and fasting
were transformed, according to the inwardness of the new
doctrine, by being made secret : a transaction between God and
the individual, not to be noted by those outside

But other commandments of the Law are not modified but
superseded. Not mere perjury is forbidden, but even the taking

THE ETHICS OF JESUS 197

of ao oath. For the phrase "Thou shalt hate thine ener
we have as a substitute ■' Love your enemies." And divorce,
which was easy under the Jewish law, Is under the Christian

forbidden.

Beside the commands winch seem to be suggested by the
Mosaic Law stand some, of a still more thorough-going char-
acter, which do not stand in any close relation to it. Such are
the very marked commands winch have been placed by some
reformers, such as Tolstoi, at the very foundation of Christian
ethic. The disciples are bidden to give to every one that asks
of them, hoping for nothing again. They are told that when
they are smitten on one cheek they are to turn the other.
And in tine their attitude towards the world around is to be
one of non-resistance to evil. They are to take no thought for
the morrow, but to live for the day in confidence that the
Father in Heaven will provide what is necessary. And that
this last injunction is rightly reported seems clear from the
passage in the Lord's Prayer as to daily bread, which is in quite
the same strain. And they are not to judge. This phrase
seems to forbid any sitting in judgment on crime, such as
being member of a law court, perhaps even taking part in any
execution of a legal sentence against a convicted malefactor.

It is sufficiently clear that if Christians were to carry out
literally these commands, they could not engage in business,
could not belong to a profession, and would be the prey of the
unprincipled and the grasping. Such principles, if at all
generally acted on, would bring to an end all civil government,
all military organisation, all industrial progress. This has
become very clear in our days from the attempts of enthusi-
asts like Tolstoi. Lailess we have recourse to the unsatis-
factory and intolerable supposition that Jesus was entirely
without practical wisdom, we must suppose one of two things.
Either we must suppose that the commands were not meant to
be taken literally, but only to be regarded as the extreme ex-
pressions of a tendency. Or else the intention was that they
should be taken literally as rules of action, but only by a
small and ascetic society moving in the midst of a hostile
world.

Christians have usually held that the command as to non-

198 EXPLORATIO EVANGELIC A

resistance of evil, and other commands like it, were not meant
to be taken literally. They have introduced all sorts of dis-
tinctions and modifications which have practically neutralised
their force, Some have held that the command of non-resist-
auce applies only as regards one's personal injuries, but does
not apply to injuries to society. This is, of course, absurd,
since an injury to an individual is an injury to society. Some
have fancied that the phrase as to thinking of the morrow
forbids only anxiety which is excessive, an interpretation
rendered impossible by the context. Some, like the Quakers,
have taken literally certain phrases of the Sermon on the
Mount, but not other phrases. Such a phrase as " Give to
him that asketh of thee," they have certainly not taken literally.
In fact, Christians generally have behaved as we might expect
men to behave who profess to receive certain commands as
divine, and yet feel it impossible to act upon them.

The cause of all these twists and deviations is the convic-
tion that the admonitions of Jesus cannot be taken literally.
But the fact is that they embody a code of conduct which has
for more than two millennia been accepted literally by certain
people. It is quite possible for a few detached enthusiasts, or
even for a very small devoted community, to give up all re-
sistance to evil, to forswear the possession of any worldly
goods, and to live without care for the morrow. One of the
most perfect types is found in the Buddhist ascetic living from
day to day on the broken food offered to him, and wearing no
garments but rags, spending all his days in meditation and in
mortification of the body, ready to perish rather than to injure
the smallest and meanest of animals. To what extent the
influence of Buddhism had penetrated across Asia to Syria and
Egypt we know not with certainty. A jirmri it would seem
almost certain that it must have made its way. For cen-
turies the missionaries of Buddhism had wandered through
India and beyond it; and alter the age of Alexander the
Great, India lay open to the West. Buddhism was the ruling
influence in India in the third century ]t.c. It has been
strongly suspected that the Essenes, who formed large com-
munities among the dews in the first century B.C., were largely
permeated by Buddhist influences. But however this may

THE ETHICS OF JESUS [99

be, it is certain that the ascetic who lived on alm8 and made
qo concession to worldly necessities was well known in the

Levant in the time of our Lord. And from that time to the
present there have been inside Christendom many who took
literally the ascetic teaching of the Sermon on the Mount.
Such have been, for example, in earlier days the solitaries of
the desert; and in more recent times the first Franciscan and
I Dominican friars.

The injunctions of Jesus, if taken literally, were perfectly
practical for small societies of enthusiasts. But can we suppose
that the formation of a small society was the object of the
Master ? And can we think that one, the chief note of whose

hing is the spiritualising of the existing Jewish ethics,
would recommend to his followers a literal asceticism? In all
things o jus works back from outward conduct to the motive
and the heart. His law of chastity, his law of charity, his
precepts for fasting and Sabbath-keeping, are all couched in a
purely spiritual vein. He looks away from outward results
and all that the world can see to that which lies within, and
is seen only by the eyes of the Father in Heaven. Is it likely
that a great part of his teaching took quite another turn and
insisted on outward conformity '.

All these questions as to what the Master did mean and
did not mean are very difficult. In the present state of our
historic knowledge they are probably in the end insoluble. For
there is undoubtedly intermixed in our Gospels with the
genuine words of Jesus much that belongs to the next genera-
tion, much that the early Church adopted not from tradition
merely, but from tradition modified and enlarged by a present
revelation. Xo man can speak with definiteness as to the
historic teaching of Jesus who has not gone over the Gospels
with the most careful thought, and determined, in the language
of Prof. Harnack, how much of the reported teaching of Jesus
is primary, how much secondary, and how much tertiary. And
in carrying out this task, the student must as far as possible
sink his own preferences and individuality, and look at every-
thing in the white historic light. Perhaps this is requiring
more than it is in the nature of all save a very few to
attain to.

EXPLORATIO E 1 'ANGELICA

Yet we may point out some indications which appear
to be found in the Gospels that Jesus had a double intent:
that he wished his practical rule of life to be taken literally
by a few, and spiritually by the many. In support of this
contention, I would appeal to his reply to the rich young
man, and the instructions to the missionaries. To the young
man who had a passion for perfection he said,1 " If thou wilt
be perfect, go, sell all that thou hast, and give to the poor, and
thou shalt have treasure in heaven : and come, follow me."
The word perfect, Te'X-eto?, used in Greece of those initiated into
the mysteries, implies that in the thought of Jesus there was
an inner circle of men whose devotion to the will of God was
absolute. To these initiated disciples many of the directions
in the Sermon on the Mount apply. To them some of the
parables were privately explained. To them were given on
certain occasions the directions as to behaviour on missionary
journeys which, according to Matthew, were given to the twelve,
and, according to Luke, to seventy attached disciples. These
directions are notable. The missionaries were to carry " no
bread, no wallet, no money in their purse," and not to take
two garments. These directions, if really given, were obviously
meant to be taken literally, and they enjoin on the envoys such
outward conduct as would belong to a Buddhist mendicant or
a wandering ascetic.

On the other hand, we do not find in the ordinary life of
the Master and Apostles the extreme rules of ascetic life.
Expenses were provided for by a purse to which disciples con-
tributed, and the simple and joyous life of the party even
roused against them in some quarters prejudices which had to
be dispelled : " Thy disciples fast not," " The Son of Man came
eating and drinking." And after the crucifixion, though the
Apostles dwelt together, we find but seldom interference with
the institution of private property. In some passages of the
Gospels poverty is praised, but poverty is not generally made a
condition of joining the society.

In this matter, as in many others, different customs and
ways of feeling could alike find a precedenl in the life of the
Master. To the pure spirituality of Jesus the spirit of self-

1 Matt xix. 21

THE ETHICS OF JESUS 201

denial and the mortification of the flesh seemed to need no
rules, but to be imposed by the power of the inner life. I

himself poverty and celibacy were natural; but he <li<l nol
erect them into a rule of the society; he only seems, in rare
cases, to have pointed to them as the way to the highest
earthly good.

Closely bound up with this question is another, Had Jesus
;ui intention of forming an organised society? This question
also requires great caution in dealing with our records, since
it was so easy for words implying the existence of a society
to slip into the traditions during the half-century when they
were still fluid. It is notable that few, if any, great religious

rmers have started with the intention of forming a society.
They have started with an overmastering impulse in their
nun consciousness, with the need of doing the will of God
themselves; and the society has grown up around them.
A priori we should expect to find the same thing in the case
of Jesus. And his ministry was so short, that there was no
time for the action of all those motives of practical necessity
which usually bear more and more strongly on the reformer as
time goes on, compelling him to organise often almost against
his will.

In considering this question, we must separate the word
" society " from the word " organised." There can be no doubt
that Jesus intended his followers to be distinguished from the
rest of the Jewish world, following a different code of morals,
recognising a higher ethical standard. The kingdom of heaven
was to spread, or at least to be reflected, on earth. But, on
the other hand, there is little trace in the Gospels of a con-
stitution for the society. Many of the precepts ascribed to
Jesus are inconsistent with any intention of organising.

As soon as a distinct organisation is discernible in the
infant Church, it is borrowed from the ways and customs of
the Greek cities of Asia and Europe, perhaps through the
mediation of the scattered synagogues. And it js in Asia Minor
that it develops earliest and most rapidly. This could not have
been the work of the Founder, being foreign to the ideas and strange
to the surroundings of Palestine. Bishops and Presbyters
belong to the churches of Asia in the first place, and only

EX FLORA TIO E V ANGELIC A

afterwards to Home and Jerusalem. Was there, however,
some earlier organisation ? Unfortunately, in this matter our
historical document is the Book of Acts, the earlier part of
which, at all events, is a very unsatisfactory record of fact.
Alike in the Gospels and in the Acts the twelve Apostles
appear as a sort of college, in constant attendance on their
Master while he was alive, and carrying on his work after his
departure. Besides, a more miscellaneous crowd certainly
followed the Master, and " ministered to him of their sub-
stance." On one occasion we read of the despatch of seventy
missionaries through the cities of Judah. But the infant
society, if such it could be called, was during the life of the
Master altogether amorphous. Bites and ceremonies it had
none save the Jewish. The Communion did not yet exist, and
even baptism was probably, as we shall see later, not cus-
tomary. The Lord's Prayer is the nearest approach to a con-
fession of faith.

In fact, while all the elements of a new society were present
in the years of ministry, they were in a fluid state. The
crystallising touch came at the time which in a later chapter
I have called the " Crisis of Christianity," at the death of
the Founder. And contact with the Greek cities and the
Hellenistic Synagogues of Asia Minor did the rest.

But if this is the case, it is clear that the ethics of Jesus,
like the rest of his teaching, must have been, at all events
primarily, individual and not social. No one, of course, can
deny that he may have foreseen that, for the realisation on
earth of the Kingdom of God, organisation would be necessary.
But it would appear that he was content to impart the
principles and the spirit which belong to the underlying
divine order of the world, leaving to the future the working
out in visible form of some reflex of that order. First prin-
ciples and ideas, later creed and organisation, latest ceremony
and art: such is the regular order in the establishment of a
new or reformed scheme of religion. And the Founder of
Christianity was not in the least likely to commit the error of
trying to invert or alter the divinely established rule in such
matters.

CHAPTEI! XVII

THE SAYINGS AND PARABLES OF JESUS

We have next to consider the sayings and the parables of
Jesus.

The practical wisdom of the world finds ordinary expres-
sion in proverbs or truisms, which condense into a sentence
the experience of many generations of people. We are all
acquainted with the ordinary worldly way of looking at things.
The object of life, in this view, is the attainment of certain
outward and visible objects of desire: riches, position, the
founding of a family or the gratification of personal tastes.
Pleasure or satisfaction is the result when one succeeds in
attaining any of these; and the sum of pleasures makes up
the happiness of life.

There is another wisdom which is not worldly, and which
finds its expression not in truism but in paradox. Of
paradoxes there are many kinds. We are sufficiently familiar
in modern literature with paradox which is a mere literary
artifice, used to strike the fancy and to secure attention. But
there are other kinds of paradox which have been used by
great teachers of all ages for conveying deeper truth, the
underlying spiritual facts which are hidden beneath the surface of
ordinary life. In this kind of speaking Jesus stands unrivalled.

It would not be possible to produce a more striking series
of profound paradoxes than that which prefaces the Sermon on
the Mount : " Blessed are the poor in spirit : for theirs is the
kingdom of heaven." The real and inner wealth, which lies
in the condition of heart and will, belongs to those who are

204 EXPLORATIO EVANGELICA

detached from earthly riches, and dull to their attraction.
" Blessed are the meek : for they shall inherit the earth." The
true enjoyment, even of visible things, belongs not to those
who warp their souls in the effort to acquire them, but to
those who in patience and gentleness are ready to make the
best of what falls to them. " Blessed are they that mourn : for
they shall be comforted." It is not those who meet with all
success and who escape all bereavement who are the happiest,
but rather those who through sorrow rise above sorrow, into
the region of perpetual peace.

"When Luke gives us his version of these beatitudes, he
places them all on a lower level, by not understanding their
inwardness and depth. He writes, " Blessed are ye poor,"
instead of " Blessed are the poor in spirit " ; and " Blessed are
ye that weep now, for ye shall laugh," for the other sentence
which we have cited. It is not at all strange that many or
most of the hearers of the preaching of the Master should thus
have taken his words at a lower level. Many must have
supposed that he was contrasting the humbleness and poverty
of the present condition of his disciples with the loftier state
which they should assume when he brought in as Messiah the
visible kingdom of God. Then they who had shared the
Master's poverty should partake of his wealth, and those who
had been despised and neglected should be crowned with glory
and honour. The miraculous victory of the Christ would
introduce upon earth a new state of things, in which those
who had had faith to receive him in dishonour should reign
with him in splendour.

And as many of the contemporaries of Jesus took the
paradoxes of his preaching as prophecies of his reign upon
earth, so many of his followers from that day to this have
taken them as a gospel of the future life, of that world beyond
the "lave where vice shall be humbled and virtue triumphant.
They have borne the Bufferings which fell upon them as

Christians in the full hope that for every pang thus endured

an exact recompense was laid up for them on the other side

Of the grave, while they Would see the vicious and the worldly
Suffering tin; torments which await those who are enemies of
1 he Church of ( lod.

THE SAYINGS AND PARABLES OF JESUS 205

Now it is quite possible that, in the teaching of Jesus, tin-
triumph of the deeper good over the superficial evil may have

been spoken of in the future tense, as a prophecy of the
course of events in the world, or in the supersensual mood, as
a statement of the laws of the realm of the risen dead. Unless
the expressions which the Master used had borne some relation
to the state of his hearers' thoughts and beliefs they would
not have been comprehended, nor even remembered. Jiut he
this as it may, the essential thing, that which makes for us
the inestimable value of the teaching of Jesus, is his marvellous
insight into the nature of the higher life, which all about us
is intertwined with the lower life. Like the rays of light
named after Etontgen, his eyes passed through the outer show
and brought to light the more solid truths which lay beneath.

It is this power of looking beyond that which is without
to that which is within which marks the great religious teacher.
In every great revival of religion among men, we may discern
its working. At the time when Jesus appeared, there was a
ferment of patriotism among the Jews, a passionate conviction
that the bands of Rome must be broken before the kingdom of
righteousness could be established. The tendency was too
strong to be counteracted even by the influence of Jesus. And
it led his compatriots straight to the Flavian war and the
horrible sack of Jerusalem. But the Kingdom of God which
Jesus had to found came not with observation. It was not of
this world, and it was set up, not by righting, but by living and
suffering. The money tribute, the badge of national subjection,
was to go to Caesar; but to God must be paid the higher
tribute of purity and love and self-renunciation.

In this light the paradoxes of Jesus have been regarded by
the most spiritual of his followers. Let us return to one of
those already cited, " Blessed are the meek : for they shall
inherit the earth." 1 Eead in the light of ordinary common-
sense, no saying could be more absurd. The meek are thrust
aside in the fierce competition of life. It is the strong men
who know what they want and are determined to get it who
reach success and occupy the world. And yet the meek and

1 The phrase is really a quotation from Psalm xxxvii. 1 1 ; but iu the new
connection it acquires a new meaning.

206 EXP LO RATIO EVANGELICA

gentle spirit carries with it such a faculty of sympathy, and
such power of enjoyment, that it may derive far more
satisfaction out of the little it attains than more restless and
ambitious souls can extract from far more extensive possessions.
Happiness is a function not of external things but of heart and
will, and it must develop from within.

" Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute
you." Here we reach a still deeper depth or a still higher
height. For even the meek and self-renouncing cannot be
happy in persecution, by the mere power of meekness. This
will mitigate their sufferings ; but something more is necessary
to actual happiness, a vehement love of righteousness, and a joy
that one is counted worthy to suffer in its cause. It is no
piece of mysticism, but matter of sober history, that multi-
tudes have " rejoiced and been exceeding glad " in the midst of
trial and persecution, when they were upheld by a good
conscience and an eager love of the cause in which they
suffered. Even death, which naturally and physiologically is
the greatest of evils, has for thousands lost its sting when
confronted with some lofty emotion. " Death," writes Lord
Bacon, " is no such terrible enemy, when a man has so many
attendants about him that can win the combat of him.
Bevenge triumphs over Death ; Love slights it ; Honour
aspireth to it ; Grief flyetli to it ; Fear pre-occupateth it," Lord
Bacon writes usually as a profound observer of life. In this
case, the insight of his genius reaches beyond the mere outer
show, and penetrates to some of the deeper springs of human
nature. But he does not see so far as the great religious
teacher who sees not merely that death may be overcome,
but that the triumph over it may be but a step in the
higher life.

The sum of all the paradoxes of Jesus is found in that
profound saying, " Whosoever will save his life shall lose it ;
but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel's,
the same shall save it." Here again there are various ways of
interpreting. X" doubt tin- promise lias encouraged and
trengthened many a martyr, holding a celestial crown before
eyes growing dim in death. And this rendering of the saying
is by no mean- illegitimate : it is one side of the truth but not

THE SAYINGS AND PARA HI. lis OF JESUS 207

the central truth. The central truth is, that the crucifying of

the lower and obvious self leads to the exaltation and
furthering of the higher and more real self. This is, as we
have Been, the central truth of religion : a truth realised by
Gautama and by Plato as well as by tin- later Isaiah and the
Founder of Christianity. But the authors of great religions
read the truth each in his own way, and from such reading each
religion takes atone of its own. The great difference between
the Buddhist and the Christian reading is simple. To the
Buddhist all self is evil, and when it is cleared away the perfect
bliss which remains is Nirvana. To the Christian only the
lower self is evil, and when it is overcome there remain
character and will, which do not disappear as they are brought
nearer to the divine, but become more real and permanent.

In the Synoptic Gospels there is scarcely a page which is
not studded with these jewel-like paradoxes. For example,
the phrase in Matthew xi. 29, "Take my yoke upon you, ami
learn of me ; for I am meek and lowly in heart," is in form an
extreme paradox. That a teacher should proclaim himself
lowly in heart, and on that ground claim obedience, seems to
the first thought absurd. Yet it is quite true when tried by
the canons of the higher life. The man who has set aside all
pride and sensitiveness has also set aside all hesitation and
self-consciousness, and can command more absolutely than the
most rigorous despot. He calls on men not so much to obey
him as to follow him into the ways of peace. And an accusa-
tion of presumption in such a case has absolutely no ground
whereon to stand.

So in another sphere, that of knowledge, the paradox of
Jesus, though false from the point of view of the world, is
true when judged by the laws of the spiritual life. Knowledge
in conduct and religion, he taught, is attained by those who
are childlike in heart, whether educated or not, and is reached
by the method of obedience rather than by study. This is not
the psychology of science, which regards any bent of the will
as a hindrance in the path of impartial knowledge. It is not
the psychology of the world, which maintains that love is blind
and none so clear-sighted as he who has fullest control of his
feelings. But it is the psychology of religion. As we have in

2o8 EX PLO RATIO EVANGELIC A

a previous chapter observed, the impulse to the will precedes
the enlightenment of the mind, and until one has yielded to the
impulse which leads to good, divine wisdom does not come.
When it does come, it does not bring knowledge of outward i ir
material things, nor of the events of history, but it does throw
liadit on the nature and the ends of conduct, and it does famish
a test of doctrine, seeing that doctrine is a reading into the
intellectual sphere of principles of conduct.

Another paradoxical passage is that terribly stern warning
as to removing the eye or the hand which offend. To worldly
wisdom it may seem obvious that a man should make the best
of every faculty, widen his experience, look into everything
with impartial eye, and do all that comes to his hand. Mere
moralists advise a life conformed to nature, and suited to one's
surroundings. They are like a physician who recommends
certain habits and medicines as conducive to health. But
religion comes in with the knife of the surgeon, and tells us that
eye and hand, desire and active powers, may be so foul and
polluted that there is no remedy but excision. This is not a
preaching of asceticism. The text does not say that a man
is the better for being maimed. But it does say that in
some cases only through maiming can come salvation. And
the analogy of the medical art is here entirely on the side of
the teacher of religion. Every operation of the surgeon is
a sort of practical paradox, the violent diminution of life
in order to further life ; and those who submit to such
operations, submit in a faith which is in essence not unlike
religious faith. It is a new phase of the analogy between the
laws which belong to the body and those of the soul which
Jesus has set forth.

To those who meet some bereavement, or are overtaken by
a mastering emotion, the ordinary course of everyday life seems
often an unreal show: as such it is constantly represented by
those great teachers who are possessed by the passion of the
spiritual life. And the things which to them appear the gnat
realities are not matters of sense nor of intellect, but are
fragments of another order of being intruding into the ordinary
ways "t' mankind with a crushing force. Nor does education
ordinarily help men readily to perceive the working of higher

THE SAYINGS AND PARABLES OF JESUS 200

Laws : such perceptioD comes far more usually from discipline
of the will, and love of the divine purpc

Much of the teaching of Jesus was imparted by parables.
Mark and Matthew ' tell us that he spoke to the larger circle
of his auditors in parables only ; while to his smaller circli
disciples he expounded these parables in private. We have a
summary of the more intimate instruction in the so-called
Sermon on the Mount ; but even of that discourse a great part
consists of parables.

The parable was a means of instruction admirably suited
to the conditions of the teaching of the Founder. In the
first place, it was easy to remember these brief and pregnant
tales, and they would pass from hearer to hearer without much
loss or deterioration. And in the second place, parables could
be made the vehicle of meaning far deeper and more varied
than the hearers could fully appreciate. Had they been
told only the morals of the tales without the tales them-
selves, many would have been offended, many would have
misunderstood, much would have been forgotten. As it is, the
parables of our Lord have remained from his day to ours
unexhausted mines of spiritual truth, with a message to every
succeeding generation.

The parables of Jesus are statements of profound spiritual
truth, of the facts and experiences of the higher life in terms
of the lower life, whether that of plants or animals, or of
mankind. And as the laws of all life are at bottom the
same, the course of scientific discovery, which has laid bare to
us more and more of the conditions and phenomena of the life
of the world about us, has enabled us to find new depths of
meaning in the Christian parables. The question, however, of
the meaning which was attached to them by the first hearers is
no easy one, and can only be solved by long and difficult
historical studies. And the question of their primary meaning
in the mouth of him who uttered them is deeper still and still
more obscure. Our solution of this problem will depend on
the theories which we hold as to the person of the Founder,
the character of the Church which he founded, the true nature
of the life of religion, and so forth.

1 Mark iv. 33 ; Matt. xiii. 34.
14

EXPLORATIO EVANGELICA

Not must we ever lose sight of the fact that as the Gospels
were written only after many years of verbal tradition, it is
quite probable, or even certain, that even the parables of the
Synoptic Gospels are not free from alteration. In a few cases
it is likely that parables of the School of Jesus, the work of
immediate disciples, were ascribed to the Master himself, or
that parables of contemporary Eabbis, being greatly admired
by the early Christians, were by them claimed as utterances
of their own Founder. This sort of interpolation, however,
would be rare compared with other and less violent perver-
sions. The alteration of a few words in a parable really
uttered by Jesus might in some cases produce a distinct
change in the meaning of the tale. Or it might be that the
parable itself was preserved with substantial accuracy, but its
background was changed so that its whole tone appeared
different. To all these possibilities of perversion we must be
alive : perversion unintentional but so natural that it could
only have been prevented by a sort of standing miracle.

It would scarcely cause regret to liberal modern Christians
if it were ascertained that some of the Parables ascribed
to Jesus did not come from him in the form in which we
possess them. The tales of the Unjust Steward, for instance,
and of Dives and Lazarus, have long been difficult of satisfactory
interpretation, and we would willingly think that they have
received at least a twist in the course of their oral tradition.
Yet on the whole we shall perhaps be wisest if we suppose
that, with very few exceptions, the parables of the Synoptic
Gospels have at least a root in the actual discourses of Jesus.
We can, however, clearly see that, in the interpretation of
parable at all events, the first disciples were often misled by
some of the idola of the Church. This will appeal from the
internal evidence offered by the text of the Evangelists them-
selves. We may roughly arrange the parables into groups.

The largest and most important group consists of the
parables which may be called those of personal experience or
individual religion. Parables such as those of the pearl of
great price, of the unforgiving servant, of the labourers hired
at various hours, but receiving every man a penny, have an
obvious as well as a profound meaning in the experience of the

THE SAYINGS AND PARABLES OF JESUS 211

individual In particular, the noble group of parables which
occur in the Third Gospel, those of the Prodigal Son, the
Pharisee and the Publican, the Good Samaritan, have reference
to the work in the hear! of man carried on by divine influence,
and hear a meaning which is out of relation to any special
circumstances. These last, however, can scarcely in strictness
be called parables. They are rather tales directly inculcating
high principles of action, or embodying truths of the higher
life.

One or two parables in Mattheiv or Mark seem to refer
primarily to the growth of a society. Such are the parables of
the mustard seed and the leaven, which illustrate the rapid
spread of a higher spirit when once it receives course among
men. But these parables also are so general and so simple in
character that they image not only the rise of Christianity, but
that of any higher creed or better impulse among men.

Next we may place the group of parables in which the tale
of the wise and foolish virgins and the tale of the talents are
conspicuous. Here opinions may differ as to the primary
meaning. Do they refer to that coming of the Son of Man
which takes place in every life, determining its destinies for
better or for worse ? Or is the reference more special, to some
particular coming of the bridegroom or return of the master,
which would be uppermost in the minds of the hearers ? And
of what kind would this coming be ? All the parables which
may be called the Parables of the Kingdom belong to this group,
and may be interpreted in a lower or higher, a more special or
more general, a materialist or a spiritual fashion.

Firstly, these parables may be taken in a sense funda-
mentally Jewish. There can be no doubt that at the beginning
of our era the religious thought and hope of the Jews were
intensely set on the appearance of a great national deliverer
or Messiah who should renovate and restore Israel, and found
upon the earth a wide dominion. The more politically-minded
of the race thought most of shaking off the yoke of the Caesars
and establishing an empire. The more spiritually minded
thought more of the spiritual baptism of the people, the setting
up of a kingdom of righteousness and of peace, so that in
Israel all the nations of the world should recognise a guide

212 EXPLO RATIO EVANGELIC A

and a deliverer. But the Messiah was to be no ordinary
prophet or king, since in his reign the pious Israelites who
had fallen asleep in deatli were to live again and to share the
glories of an ideal realm. Such was at the time the form into
which the genius of the Hebrew race had thrown the passion
for the higher life which has always been the noblest posses-
sion of that race.

While their Master lived, the disciples of Jesus were
earnestly expecting, in spite of his continual protest, that he
would come forth suddenly as a national deliverer. And after
his death, they constantly expected to see him shortly return in
the clouds of heaven to renew and to judge Israel and the
world. Their minds being constantly set in this key, they
would naturally accept all the Parables of the Kingdom with
a bias. They would interpret them in accordance with their
expectations of a near and visible reign of the Saints. And
they might be expected sometimes unconsciously to modify
the parables themselves, to make them more susceptible of
such explanation.

In all societies those who take a materialistic view must be
the majority. No doubt among the early Christians many merely
accepted the current expectations of a kingdom rather national
than spiritual, founded in the respect and fear of the surround-
ing peoples rather than in righteousness and holiness. But there
were others to whom the phrase Kingdom of Heaven had
another and a higher meaning. They hoped that before the
second coming of the Master a divine society might exist and
increase upon earth. Before the conversion of St. Paul there
was in Jerusalem a church organised under the direction of the
Apostles, and regarding itself as the representative on earth of
its departed head. St. Paul developed and spiritualised the
idea of the community with Christ upon earth, just as lie
developed and spiritualised baptism, and the Lord's Supper,
and the idea of salvation by faith. To him the Church was
the earthly body of Christ, his blameless bride, a society which
carried on upon earth the life which had begun with the birth
of Jesus.

Secondly, then, it is in relation to the < Ihristian community,
considered as an ideal unity, that some of the Parables of the

THE SAYINGS AND PARABLES OF JESUS 213

Kingdom would be mosl readily interpreted. Parables such as
that of the mustard Beed and of the leaven applied very
naturally to the rapid growth of a new society in the midst of
:h" Jewish and Heathen world. And they would not apply to a
sudden and outward revelation of the Kingdom. The seed
and the leaven work slowly and imperceptibly, until after a
tune they are found to have completely changed their sur-
roundings.

There is one parable in the three Gospels which stands
Bomewhat apart from the rest, and which does seem to have a
definite application to the existing state of things. This is
the parable oi the vineyard which is leased by its owner to
husbandmen, who withhold from him its fruits and destroy his
messengers, finally slaying his own son. All the Evangelists
observe that the Jewish rulers regarded this parable as spoken
against them. And even apart from this, the parable bears on
the face of it an intention to bring home to the ruling powers
their unfaithfulness to their trust, and to foretell the end of
their reign. This is an essentially Jewish parable, but it stands
in a class by itself.

It may safely be said that the great majority of the
parables of Jesus are of quite another character than this, with
less reference to immediate circumstance, and more bearing on
spiritual experience. They may best be regarded as directly
embodying the facts of the spiritual life as disclosed in the
consciousness of individuals. Even the parables already
mentioned, those of the mustard-seed and the leaven, present
as with a very truthful image of the gradual rise and spread
of the higher life in the heart. In the case of many of the
parables, such as that of the labourers who received every man
a penny, that of the pearl of great price, that of the talents,
and others, the individual interpretation lies nearest and is
most satisfactory. And in other groups of parables, such tales
as that of the lost sheep and the Prodigal Son, that of the
Good Samaritan, and others, the application to conduct and to
the life of individuals is distinctly predominant. An interest-
ing analogy may be found in the Platonic writings. It has
been well observed by I >r. AVestcott that Plato puts the myths
which have a personal and ethical bearing in the mouth of

214 EXPLO RATIO EVANGELICA

Socrates ; the cosmic myths in the mouths of others. This
distinction seems to have historical basis. In the same way,
we may with most confidence attribute to Jesus those parables,
and those interpretations of parables, in which, the ethically
spiritual tendency is most clear.

That this is not a mere personal view of the writer may
best be shown by considering the testimony to be found in the
Gospels themselves, as to the way in which the Founder wished
his parables to be considered.

In one instance we possess an explanation of a parable
which purports to come from Jesus himself; it is attached to
the parable of the sower, which is in itself one of the most
clear and perspicuous. The lines on which it runs are familiar
to every reader of the New Testament, " The sower soweth the
word," with what follows, showing on what kind of human soil
the seed of the word may fall, and what kind of fruit it will
bear in the lives of various classes of hearers. In this case
parable and explanation alike are given in all the Synoptic
Evangelists ; both alike belong to the earliest teaching of
Christianity, and both have every appearance of belonging to
the Founder. But it is noteworthy that the interpretation is
almost as wide and as capable of various renderings as is the
parable itself. It amounts scarcely to more than this, " The
sowing of seed has a parallel in the spiritual life, and the
results are similar in the one case and in the other."

It is very instructive to compare with this explanation
another which is found in the First Gospel only.1 The parable
here explained is that of the tares of the field, of the farmer
who sows wheat in his land, and of the enemy who by stealth
sows tares among the wheat ; the tares and the wheat being
left to grow up together until the harvest, when the tares shall
be burned and the wheat stored in the granary. It is supposed
by some critics that this parable originated entirely in the
conditions of the early Church, and does not come from the
Founder. But it seems to me at least as probable that the
parable itself is authentic and only the interpretation a later
addition. For it is clear that this parable may be explained in
precisely the same fashion as that of the sower. The wheat

1 Matt. xiii. 37.

THE SA YINGS AND PARABLES OE JESUS 215

which is sown is the word : the tares of thia parable, like the
springing weeds of the parable of the sower, are the evil teach-
ings <>t' the world and the devil, which choke the Growth of the

word. The harvest would be death, when the fruits of man's
life are judged, and what is worldly and false in him perishes.
But the explanation given in the text of the Gospel is quite
different to this. The parable is made to refer not to the facts
of tie- spiritual life, hut to the second coming of the .Son of
.Man. The seed is not the word, hut good men; and the tares
are not the deceits of the world, but the human enemies of the
kingdom of God; the harvest is not death, hut the coming of
the Messiah in his glory.

It may be strongly suspected that the explanation of our
text does not come from Jesus himself. There is some unlike-
ness to the teaching of the Master in the representation of evil
men as put into the world by the devil.1 And the writer of
the Gospel seems to have had a passing sense of this, for he is
not consistent in his expressions. In v. 38 he writes, "The
tires are the children of the wicked one"; hut in v. 41 he
speaks of the tares as "all things that offend, and them which
do iniquity." Further, we know to what a surpassing
degree the idea of the Second Coming dominated the minds
of the first generation of Christians : to this subject I musl
return in a future chapter. It seems in view of these facts
not unreasonable at least to suspect that the explanation of the
parable given in our narrative is incorrect; and that it really
was, like that of which I have already spoken, in origin a
parable of the higher life, and probably authentic.

It is impossible in this place to discuss in more detail the
meaning of the various parables of Jesus. Perhaps enough
has been said to justify the assertion, the only assertion
necessary to our present purpose, that the parables embody
directly facts and experiences of the spiritual life. In some
cases more direct reference seems to be intended to the spiritual
life as it appears in communities. In other cases it is the life
of individuals which seems to be most prominent in the mind
of the author of the parable. This distinction, however, is but
of moderate importance, since the phenomena of the higher life
1 I am, of course, aware of the language attributed to Jesus in John viii. 38-44.

2i6 EXPLO RATIO EVANGELIC A

in societies are closely parallel to the phenomena which are to
be observed in the consciousness of individuals. But it appears
to be a misapprehension of the true purpose and meaning of
the parables when they are interpreted, as is that of the tares
of the field in Matthew's Gospel, in relation to the expected
Second Coming of the Son of Man. Such an interpretation is
a confusing of parable and prophecy such as would naturally
arise in the minds of the first disciples. And it is equally a
misinterpretation to regard them as belonging to a future life
and a world beyond the grave. They state the facts of
experience, not the probabilities of a future state ; though, of
course, the best basis for our hopes of the future must lie in a
perception of existing fact.

The teaching of the Jesus of the Synoptics contains many
precepts as to the way in which his disciples are to bear them-
selves in the world, as to their duty to God and their neighbours.
It contains a full revelation of the relation of the human will
to the divine, and of the divine life which arises from the
communion of God with man. It lays bare an ideal world,
the Kingdom of Heaven, which may to some extent be worked
into the fabric of the world of sense. It is full of the sublime
paradoxes which are the highest truths, showing how the real
lies under the seeming, and how to gain his truer life a uinii
must be ready to sacrifice his apparent life.

But in the Synoptists there will be found no system of
doctrine. The facts of experience are set forth, but they are
not worked into a coherent system. This is indeed generally
recognised. It is a commonplace to contrast the intensely
ethical teaching of the Master with the doctrinal teaching of
his followers. No one has done this more luminously or with
more genius than Matthew Arnold in his inimitable work,
Literature and Dogma. But it is easy for any ordinary person
to arrive at the conclusion which Arnold enforces with un-
matched eloquence, by merely going over in succession the
clauses of one of the Creeds of Christendom, and observing
how little relation the affirmations of the Creed have to the
Sermon on the Mount, or to the Parables of the Kingdom of
Heaven.

I am aware that many people think that though the

THE SAYINGS AND PARABLES OF JESUS 217

statements of the Christian Creeds cannot be directly based on
the utterances of .li-sus, yet tliey can 1"- by processes of reason-
ing worked out of them. To refui «• tin's view would be a long
and a difficull task, which I do not propose here to attempt.
The works of Matthew Arnold in particular render superfluous
any attempt to rediscuss questions which he has treated with
complete mastery. The truth is that in matters of doctrine
reasoning is not to be wholly relied on. Reasoning is to be
trusted in the field of sense and of sensuous experience, actual
or possible, but in dealing with that which is beyond experience,
reason is like a bird which should try to fly in a vacuum.
On this subject I have already enlarged. But I may point
out that, as a matter of tact, theologians, as any one may see
by consulting their works, do not usually go to the Synoptic
discourses for statements of doctrine, or even for the bases of
doctrine, but to the Fourth Gospel and the Epistles of St. Paul.

CHAPTEE XVIII

CHRISTIAN MIRACLE

We now pass from the teaching to the life of Jesus as recorded
by our authorities. In so doing we leave a not easy task for
one far more difficult. The first fact in regard to that life
which presents itself to us is its setting of miracle.

Miracles have been in all ages of the world's history
attributed to those who appeared to have a spiritual mission
for mankind. In India, as Sir A. C. Lyall has shown,1 a
religious teacher does not gain a following unless he is credited
with miraculous powers. Even if reformers and saints do not
claim such powers, yet if their personalities are impressive a
crop of miracles soon springs up around them. Among the
Jews at all periods of their history there has been a tendency
to scan eagerly every man of remarkable character or insight
with the view of finding in his deeds traces of superhuman
powers ; and when such powers have been discovered or
imagined in a teacher, converts have flocked after him with a
zeal which no mere teaching would have kindled. St. Paul
rightly declared the seeking for a sign the mark of the Jewish
mind, as the love of wisdom marked the educated Greeks.
And in the history of Christianity the saint has usually proved
his title to sainthood by doing wonders, whether alive or dead.

Indeed, far beyond Christian saint and Jew and Greek, into
the mists which lie about the beginnings of civilisation, we can
trace the wonder-worker. .And we can see him at work in our
own day in Africa. The medicine man of the savage would be

1 Asiatic Studies, p. 118.

CHRISTIAN MIRACLE 219

nothing accounted of it' he did not burn men iato animals, make
rain, give his followers spells for the cure of disease, the defeat
of enemies, the capture of game. It is a great step in civilisa-
tion and in the moralising of society when these powers are
connected in the general belief with intellectual and moral
pre-eminence rather than with the mere possession of secrets
and charms. That the attribution of miraculous powers to men
persists from age to age proves that there are farts at the
basis of the belief: probably fads misunderstood.

In reality, the belief seems to rest on a confusion very
natural before the rise of accurate observation: a confusion
between the power of men over the souls and bodies of other
men and their power over external things. A chief with force
of will and character seems to radiate energy over those
about him. A medicine man who has skill in his profession
can govern by it the minds and even the bodies of those who
approach him. The extent of the power of man over man
among the uncivilised is enormous, and its limits have never
been clearly mapped out. The phenomena of mesmerism and
telepathy are but specimens of a vast mass of fact which is as
yet but little understood. The power of man over lower and
inanimate nature stands on quite another basis. The savage and
the barbarian do not understand the rigidity of this distinction.
It is only by slow degrees that man has discovered how uniform
and far-reaching are the laws of the visible world.

The lines on which the modern educated critic has to deal
with miracles are clear. First, he has to distinguish between
miracles proper, that is, complete deviations from the course of
nature, and remarkable human phenomena which do not
violate that course.1 Wonders of some kind are so frequent a
phenomenon of religious revivals that it would be indeed
strange if they were absent from the rise of Christianity. But
miracles proper come into another category.

The events in the life of the Founder on which many
Christians fix their faith are of a distinctly miraculous character.
But the educated world has for many years been steadily pro-
ceeding in the direction of the elimination of the miraculous

1 This distinction is insisted on in Dr. E. A. Abbott's work Thr Kernel and
the Husk.

22o EXPLORATIO EVANGELIC A

from history. For a century past there have been pitted
against one another, on the one side the antecedent improb-
abilities of miracles, on the other the testimony that they
took place. But now the continual growth of science has
strongly increased the improbability that miracles properly so-
called should occur, and the progress of criticism has infinitely
weakened the evidence which exists in their favour. And
moreover, the study of psychology and of anthropology has
made it very much more easily intelligible that the belief in
the occurrence of miracles should arise without the fact of
their occurrence.

In regard to miracles proper, then, the question before us
is not whether they took place or not, but how the belief that
they did take place can have arisen. And it may fairly be
said that anthropology is by no means unequal to the dis-
cussion of this question. • The false position in which miracles
are often placed in relation to the origin of Christianity is in
part an unfortunate legacy to our times of the materialism of
the last century. Writers like Paley so deeply impressed
upon the educated in England that the evidences of Christian-
ity rested mainly upon a basis of miracle, that we find it
hard to rise above such views.

It is refreshing to turn to the contrast offered to them in
St. Paul's autobiography in 2 Covin t hi ans. Driven by the
attacks of his enemies to set forth his claims to the apostolate,
he passionately sketches the nature of his claims on the
respect and obedience of the Church at Corinth. He begins
with his Jewish descent (xi. 22); then narrates the perils
and sufferings which he has undergone for Christ (xi.
23-33) ; next he dwells on his strongest claim to apostolic
inspiration, the visions and personal revelations bestowed
on him by the Lord (xii. 1-10); lastly, he mentions in one
single verse the signs and wonders (arjfiela teal repara teal
&vvd/xei<;) which had marked his stay at Corinth. Though he
claims the extraordinary powers possessed by other apostles,
yet he deems them barely worthy of mention in comparison
with his sufferings for Christ, and his communion with his
riser Lord.

In the speech given to Peter on the Day of Pentecost

CHRISTIAN MIRACLE

A ta ii. 22) the same three words {o-qpela /cal repara Km
Bwcifiei^i) are used in Bpeaking of the miraculous element
which had accompanied the lite of Jesus on earth. And there
can be no doubt thai any attempt to eliminate from that life
a- recorded in the Gospels all that is extraordinary ami
unusual in the relations of our Lord to the visible world
must result in its complete dissolution into myth and fancy.
However far up towards its source we may trace the stream of
the great biography, we still find discourses and wonders so
closely intermingled that if we refuse to credit the wonders we
deprive the discourses of all claim to authenticity, except such
as they may possess in their own character.

When, however, we cease to confuse all that was extra-
ordinary in the life of Jesus and his Apostles under the
general term wonders or miracles, and endeavour to distinguish
classes and circumstances among the wondrous works, we im-
mediately find that our testimony in regard to some classes of
wonders is very much stronger and clearer, and in regard to
other classes almost evanescent.

In all ages, times of great religious excitement and revival
have been marked by a series of remarkable human phenomena,
imperfectly understood, and having in them elements which
must certainly be called supernatural, if by the natural we
mean the ordinary experience of daily life, yet which need not
be supernatural in any extreme sense of the word. Such is
the speaking with tongues of which we have so vivid a descrip-
tion, as seen in the Church of Corinth, in 1 Corinthians xiv.,
and which has been of occasional recurrence in Christian
churches. And such is faith-healing : a phenomenon which in
a degraded form may be studied in the phenomena of
hypnotism, and which in a far more noble and spiritual form
has been a frequent accompaniment of outbreaks of Christian
and Mohammedan enthusiasm.

I am no adherent of the wild theories of modern spiritual-
ists, and I regard with the utmost distrust and aversion the
anti-moral experiments of the hypnotists. Yet taking the
evidence as it stands, hypnotism certainly seems to dispose
finally and completely of the cruder sort of materialist
theories as to the constitution of man and of the world.

EX PL OP A TIO E VA NGEL1CA

Whatever it does not prove, it certainly has proved in a
remarkable way the predominance of will and mind over the
body and material conditions. And thus whole groups of so-
called miracles recorded in history take quite a new aspect,
and pass out of the domain of the incredible into that of the
credible. Wonders of healing, in particular, cannot now be
called in any true sense of the word miraculous.

We may begin with the marvels recorded of Paul by
others if not by himself. In one place (1 Corinthians xiv. 18)
he claims the power of speaking with tongues, setting small
store by it. The biography in the latter half of the Acts is
not entirely satisfactory, having too much in it of the style of
the literary compiler. We know also from the comparison of
the Gospel of Luke with the other Synoptic Gospels, that the
writer of Acts had a decided liking for what was miraculous.1
Yet of the remarkable deeds attributed to St. Paul by this writer,
none indicate miraculous power over external nature, but all
merely a great force of intellect and will over men's minds, and
through men's minds on their bodies. Of ordinary miracles of
healing and of the casting out of evil spirits we need not speak
in detail. That many diseases, among others epilepsy and what
the ancients call demoniac possession, do yield to moral and
volitional force is a fact sufficiently familiar to us. Whether
any of the particular diseases which Paul is said to have
healed were of another character, it is useless to inquire,
since we cannot trust our authorities in such matters of
detail.

As a sort of complement to the healing of the sick, Ely mas
was by Paul smitten with blindness. But we are told that
the blindness was temporary ; and temporary blindness is every
day inflicted on patients by physicians who work by mesmerism
and hypnotism. The restoration of Eutychus has only been
made into a miracle by the bystanders. The narrative in Acts
(xx. 9) merely says that the. youth fell from a height and was
taken up to all appearance dead; but that Paul declared him
to be still alive. As to other supposed Pauline miracles, the
escape from prison {Acts xvi. 25), the incident of the viper at

1 Fur instances, Bee tin- article "Gospels" in tin Encyclopaedia Britannica, x.

M>!).

CHRISTIAN MIRACLE

Melita (Acts xwiii. 3), and bo forth, they could only with
reason be called miraculous, if the writer of Acts is supposed
to be verbally inspired; if we suppose a little margin of
human inaccuracy in the accounts, they become merely events
of which the explanation is not easy, because we know bo few
of the circumstances of them.

Thus it seems certain that when Paul speaks of signs and
wonders and powers as accompanying his ministry, he must
mean that he claimed the power to heal diseases, to cast out
demons, to speak with tongues and the like ; and we cease to
wonder that to these gifts he incomparably preferred the
" visions and revelations of the Lord," which raised him to
another sphere of being, and even his perils and sufferings in
the Christian cause.

It is always the soundest plan in investigating the pheno-
mena of nascent Christianity to begin with St. Paul, who is to
in in his letters so real and so human, and to work back from
him to the far more vague and shadowy persons who stand
nearer to the cradle of the faith.

Next let us consider the wonders wrought by Peter as re-
corded in the earlier chapters of the Acts. It has lon«r aero
been noticed that they present a curious parallelism to those
of Paul. But in each case the marvel recorded of Peter is of
a more strange and striking character than that recorded of
Paul. Paul smites Ely mas with temporary blindness ; Peter
strikes Ananias and Sapphira dead with a word. Paul and
Silas escape from prison in consequence of an earthquake, but
Peter is visited in prison by an angel who brings him forth,
while doors open before him of their own accord, and that on
two separate occasions (Acts v. 19, xii. 7). From Paul's
person handkerchiefs are taken to the sick, and they recover
(Acts xix. 11); but the shadow of Peter passing by is so
potent that it does away with the need for any material con-
tact, and the sick are equally cured (Acts v. 15). This con-
trast is singularly instructive, and seems to indicate one or
both of two things : first, that the writer of Acts stood at a
greater distance from Peter, so that the marvels of his life had
more space and time to grow and spread before reaching that
writer ; or second, that the personality of Peter was of such a

EX FLORA TIG EVANGELICA

character that marvels more readily centred about it than
about Paul

The suggestion furnished us by the second of these prob-
abilities seems to me especially valuable ; and I propose to
return to it presently. Meantime let us consider the miracles
of the Gospels ; to see if they also may be easily divided into
classes. No doubt such an attempt has already been made by
many abler and more learned writers ; yet I venture to attack
the problem in my own way, not attempting to be complete
or exhaustive.

Of the wonders attributed in the Gospels to Jesus, the
great majority are works of healing. In Mark's Gospel, which
is the most primitive and trustworthy of all, such deeds are
so wrought into the very fabric of the life of Jesus, that they
cannot be removed without destroying it, nor can they be
entirely discredited without a quite unnecessary scepticism. The
soberest historical criticism must allow that the wisdom and
beauty of the teaching of our Lord make it a far more astonish-
ing feature of history than almost any degree of power over
men's minds and bodies. The teaching is far more miraculous
than the deeds of healing ; and since there is no possibility of
denying the teaching (for who could have invented it ?), the
lesser wonder may pass in the shadow of the greater. But at
the same time we cannot trust our authorities as to the details
of any particular cure. They were not trained observers ; and
such a notion as that certain bodily failings yield to moral
causes, while others do not, would be entirely outside their
horizon. Many of the accounts in the Synoptic Gospels of
cures wrought by our Lord are cases in which the nerves and
brain are the main seat of the disorder. These were at the
time regarded as the result of possession by an evil spirit, and
are so spoken of in the Gospels. It is quite clear that the
mere prevalence of this belief, combined with the belief,
equally widespread, that evil spirits could be exorcised by
great teachers and prophets, must have made the sufferers
extremely susceptible to moral influences in the attack on their
diseases. Most instructive in this aspect is a passage in
Matthew xii. The Pharisees, bitter opponents of Jesus, arc
represented as trying to minimise the impression caused by

CHRISTIAN MIRACLE 225

the Master's exorcisms of evil Bpirits. But they do not attempt
to deny that the exorcism is a fact ; they only say thai it must
result from sonic compact with Beelzebub, the chief of the
evil spirits. And Jesus in replying to them says, "If I by
Beelzebub cast out devils, by whom do your children cast
them >>ut '." as if the expulsion of devils were quite a recog-
nised branch of super-physical medicine. Xo doubt we are
also told that Jesus healed diseases of another kind, little related
to the nerves. It seems wisest in these cases to leave open the
question whether the narrative is inaccurate, tfr whether the
power of mind and will over the bodies of men is greater than
we are at pie-em disposed to think.

We must not pass on without a few words on the fact,
which can scarcely be doubted, that Jesus regarded many
forms of disease as cases of demoniac possession. Naturally,
to the materialism which has from the earliest times reigned
in schools of systematic medicine, this view will seem childish
and absurd. It was, in fact, a hypothesis to account for certain
observed facts, just as in our own days the presence of dis-
embodied spirits is a theory brought forward by spiritualists
to account for phenomena the true nature of which is not
understood. It is probable that Jesus accepted the hypothesis
as easily as he accepted the hypothesis that the sun moves
round the earth. But he could not have accepted it unless he
had regarded spirits of evil as constantly active in the world
to tempt mankind and to oppose the children of light.
I have in a previous chapter, in stating that men are
tempted to evil, left open the question how far this fact
may be accounted for by the principle of atavism, which our
fathers would have called original sin. Here again, then, the
Master only accepted a current theory as to the cause of a
real fact. And it must be allowed that no inspiration of
which we have any record in history has saved him who was
inspired from false theories as to the causes of existing facts
and tendencies.

Next may be eliminated the wonders recorded only in the
Fourth Gospel. The author of that wonderful book is almost
unsurpassed as a theologian. And in certain details of fact he
seems to be more accurately informed than the Synoptists.

'5

EXP LOR A TIO E VANGELICA

But his value as a witness is largely destroyed by the
powerful prepossessions and very marked tendencies of his
mind. A very great constructive thinker, he regards reported
facts as mere material to be accepted or rejected as may suit
the necessities of his doctrinal fabric. A thorough- going
spiritualist, he would have imperfect understanding of the
modern scientific passion for fact and evidence. To criticise
from the historical point of view such narratives as that of the
change of water into wine, or that of the raising of Lazarus, is
to do them infinite injustice. It is like criticising a mediaeval
altar-piece by strict principles of optics, or condemning the
great compositions of Paolo Veronese because the dress of his
figures is not historically accurate.

On somewhat different grounds we may set aside the
miracles of our Lord's childhood and youth. The only part of
the life recorded by the Synoptists which can fairly claim a
historical character begins with the calling of Peter and ends
with the Crucifixion. We know from the apocryphal gospels
how the fancy and piety of the early Christians delighted in
embellishing the childish life of the Master with wonders of
all kinds. The early chapters of the Third Gospel, though
very superior to these in ethical and literary character, have a
legendary air. But between the time when Jesus called
his Apostles from their fishing and their affairs, and the time
when he was condemned to the cross, we have a period the
events of which must have been familiar to many witnesses,
and may even now be to some extent recovered from their
testimony.

In the Second Gospel, incomparably our most sober and
trustworthy record, the historic career of Jesus is adorned by
but three or four miracles properly so called : that is, deeds
violating the order of nature as shown in the ordinary experi-
ence of mankind. These are, the stilling of a tempest at sea
(iv. .".II); the walking on (lie sea to the boat of the disciples
( \ i. 40); the feeding of multitudes, twice repeated (vi. 41,
viii. 6); and the cursing of the li.u tree, with its result (xi. 14).
There are various ways in which (he miraculous element may
be eliminated from each of these stories without any violence
of hypothesis. I do qoI care to attempt any such explanation,

CHRISTIAN MIR, nil-. 227

because it seems to me that 110 particular explanation can
reach more than a moderate degree of probability. What is
quite certain is that any one of half-a-dozen explanations is
more likely to represent the historic fact than an acceptance

of the narrative as it stands in a perfectly literal and un-
imaginative fashion. The testimony of our anonymous
historian, sensible and truthful as he usually is, is insufficient
to overbalance the extreme historic improbability that the

events took place precisely as he narrates them. He may
reproduce a somewhat distorted account of things which really
took place; he may have confused visions with waking
realities; he may have taken for literal fact stories told as
parables. In any case, history cannot accept his statements
as they stand without treason against science and historic
method.

It is a remarkable instance of the candour of the authors
of the Synoptic Gospels, that they not only record the fact
that Jesus did not work his mighty cures except where faith
was present to receive the cure, hut also preserve {Marie viii. 12)
the remarkable saying of the Master, " There shall be no sign
given unto this generation." The parallel passages 1 in the
other two Gospels add, "but the sign of Jonah." And Luke
gives an excellent explanation of the phrase, " as Jonah
became a sign unto the Xinevites, so shall also the Son of
Man be to this generation." The sign, that is, shall be
preaching, like the warning teaching of Jonah in Nineveh.
The interpretation given in Mattk&w is interesting, "As Jonah
was three days and three nights in the belly of the whale, so
shall the Son of Man he three days and three nights in the
heart of the earth." This is obviously a later and less satis-
factory explanation of the saying of the Master. And in fact
the context in Matthew ~ more satisfactorily explains the reason
why no sign was needed. Jesus appeals from the confirma-
tion of his words by miracle to their confirmation by
their accordance with spiritual laws. Changes in the sky
foretell the weather, and the weather-wise learn to interpret
those signs : in the same way those who understood the social

1 Luke xi. 29 ; Matt, xvi. 4, of. xii. 39.
- xvi. 1-4.

EXP LOR A TIO E VA NGEL1CA

and religious phenomena of the time would need no miraculous
warning to tell them that it was God's kingdom which was
being proclaimed throughout Israel. In any case Jesus
clearly repudiates the working of miracles such as the people
longed for. Signs of a kind, such as strange cures of disease,
he does seem to have given them : but he repudiated the role
of the mere wonder-worker. Therefore in rejecting the literal
truth of miraculous tales in the Gospel we follow the line clearly
indicated by our Founder.

Three or four miracles, besides those already mentioned,
are in the First and Third Gospels attributed to Jesus. To the
walking on the sea, the First adds the perhaps allegorical story of
Peter's attempt to pass over the sea to meet his Master ; and
in the same Gospel is found the story of the piece of money
found in the fish's mouth by Peter. In the Third Gospel we
find the marvellous (not necessarily miraculous) draught of
fishes at the calling of Peter, and the healing of Malchus'
ear, which Peter had cut off. This makes the list nearly or
quite complete. And in all four of these cases we may notice
one remarkable connecting fact. All the marvels belong to
peculiarly Petrine episodes. There are also miraculous or
semi-miraculous elements in our accounts of Peter's denial of
his Lord, and in the Transfiguration and the Resurrection, for
which he was the main authority. This takes us back to an
observation to which we had already been led by a considera-
tion of the Ads, that the person of Peter has a natural attrac-
tion for the miraculous. Why this should be, we are perhaps
scarcely in a position to say. He was by nature impulsive
and energetic, and by bringing up unlearned and ignorant :
also the Ads represent him as a seer of visions in a trance
(x. 10); and such a disposition would naturally go with a
readiness to accept the miraculous on easy terms. Yet the
Second Gospel, which tradition especially associates with Peter,
is singularly free from miraculous story. There is here some-
thing difficult of explanation which may suggest that perhaps
after all it was the Judseo-Christian following of Peter, rather
than himself, which had a strong appetite for the marvellous.

The miracles connected in ordinary Christian thought with
the Nativity and the Resurrection 1 reserve for treatment in

CHRISTIAN MIRACLE 229

other chapters. The Transfiguration, of which Bome may think
in this connection, cannot fairly be called a miracle The
testimony in regard to it is singularly unsatisfactory, the
Apostles being, according to Luke, heavy with sleep, and their
spokesman Peter dazed in mind. But it' the testimony were
ample, all that it could prove would be a vision, Buch as was
common anion- the disciples in the days of the Acts.

We have already observed that the origin of many of the
deeds recorded of Jesus in the Gospels must be Bought some-
times in the circumstances and beliefs of the Grceco-Iioman
world, and sometimes in passages of the Old Testament. The
narratives of miraculous events are no exception to this general
rule. We may briefly show this by the citation of one passage
from a Roman historian, and one passage from the Hebrew
annals.

We are informed by Tacitus ] that when Vespasian was at
Alexandria, two men suffering, one from a disease of the eyes
and one from a crippled hand, approached him as suppliants,
saying that the god Serapis had bidden them seek from him
the cure of their respective diseases. A'espasian at first rejected
their rec^iests with a smile ; but when they persisted, it
appeared to him that possibly there might be some ground for
their belief in a divine impulse, in rejecting which he might
be guilty of impiety. Moreover, the physicians who examined
the patients said that their condition was not such as absolutely
to exclude cure under certain circumstances. Vespasian re-
solved, therefore, to make the trial. He anointed with spittle
the eyes of the blind man, and put his foot on the diseased
hand. In both cases healing immediately followed. A
modern reader has no difficulty in accepting the narrative of
Tacitus as having a basis of fact. Cures of this kind are any-
thing but foreign to experience ; yet they offer a close parallel
to some of the cures recorded in the New Testament.

A miracle of a different kind is the miraculous feeding of
the multitudes. Here there is no cpiestion of the power of
faith on bodily condition, but of a physical multiplication of
bread and meat. As it stands, the account of the miracle
looks inexpugnable, and yet there are few who will not feel

1 His/, iv. 81.

EX PL ORA TIO E VA NGEL1CA

that the position has been turned when they have read a few
verses out of the life of Elisha,1 " And there came a man from
Baal-shalisha, and brought the man of God bread of the first-
fruits, twenty loaves of barley, and full ears of corn in the
husk thereof. And he said, Give unto the people that they
may eat. And his servitor said, What, should I set this before
an hundred men ? He said again, Give the people that they
may eat : for thus saith the Lord, they shall eat and shall leave
thereof. So he set it before them, and they did eat, and left
thereof, according to the word of the Lord." This narrative
was familiar to those who wrote the Gospels, and it would
make them ready to receive any report of similar miracles as
wrought by Jesus. And in the traditions of the life of
Mohammed, though he expressly in the Koran repudiates
miraculous powers, several cases are recorded in which the
Prophet is said to have fed multitudes on morsels of food.
Far as the notion lies outside our modern horizon, it is clear
that in ancient Syria the power to multiply food was regarded
as a natural part of the equipment of a prophet. If, as a
matter of fact, Jesus had been asked to perforin such miracles,
we can scarcely doubt that he would have made answer, as on
a recorded occasion, "Man shall not live by bread alone, but
by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God." But
that the spiritual teacher should, in the traditions, become a
thaumaturgic magician was at the time a necessity. One of
the most spiritual of Christians, Angelique Arnauld, im-
mediately after a reputed miracle had been wrought in her
convent, wrote thus to a friend,- " Do not desire, my dear
sister, that God should deliver his truth by visible miracles,
but by those invisible marvels of the conversion of hearts,
which are done without rumour and noise." This is a saying
which would, we may be confident, have been fully approved
by the Founder of Christianity.

Most instinctive is the gradual multiplication of miraculous
stories as we go further and further from the fountain-head of
Christian story, reaching a climax in the later Apocryphal
Gospels. Most Christians feel a natural dislike to the com-

1 2 Kings iv. 12.
- Beard, Port Royal, i. 310.

CHRISTIAN MIRACLE 231

parison oi the phenomena of Christianity with those of othei
religions. Set sometimes such comparison is very help-
ful, and it is so in the matter before us. Mohammed, like
Jesus, was constantly urged to show some heavenly sign in
confirmation of his mission. But he consistently disclaimed
the power of working miracles, and declared that those who
were insensible to the signs of God's working in the world of
nature and of human experience would not be moved even if
a special miracle were wrought. This at once reminds us of
the saying attributed to Jesus, "If they hear not Moses and
the Prophets, neither will they be persuaded if one rise from
the dead." Mohammed is said to have appealed to the Koran
itself as a quite sufficient miracle ; and here again we find a
curious parallel to the saying of Jesus about Jonah and his
preaching. It is, however, noteworthy that though in the
Koran, which was in the hands of every pious Mohammedan,
the founder of the religion of Islam declared that he could not
work miracles, yet the natural tendencies of human nature
were too strong to be resisted, and a crop of stories soon began
to arise in which miraculous powers were attributed to him.

A still more remarkable parallel might be drawn, were this
the place to do it, between the history of Christian miracle and
the development of the mass of miraculous legends which
gradually grew up round the life of Gautama in India. I
need call attention to but two points. First, our knowledge
of the teaching of Gautama is far more accurate than our
knowledge of the events of his life. And, second, the nearer
our texts are to the actual period with which they deal, the
less prominent is the element of miracle, while the miracles
actually recorded are of a less startling character, and more
often mere embodiments of spiritual experience in symbolic
language. We have but to substitute a greater name for that
of Gautama, in order to read undeniable truth in regard to
the origins of our own religion. I have already shown
how the recorded history of St. Francis illustrates the same
laws.

The defenders of miracles in our days usually take an a
priori line. Some say that Jesus being what he was, it was
natural that he should stand in an abnormal relation to nature,

EXPL OR A TIO E VA NGELICA

and have unusual powers in regard to it.1 Arguments of this
kind are precisely those which historians regard with the utmost
suspicion. It is impossible wholly to banish pre-suppositions
from history, but they must always be subjected to very severe
scrutiny. Firstly, one does not see why a superiority to man-
kind of a moral and spiritual kind should confer extraordinary
powers over inanimate nature. Power over men's thoughts
and hearts, and so over their bodies, it would, according to all
analogy, impart ; but the power of suspending natural law is
something of quite another kind. And, secondly, after all,
the matter must be settled by evidence. And it is the simple
truth to say that the evidence of actual miracle in the life of
our Lord is so weak, that if we were beforehand certain that
he would work miracles, we could not now ascertain what
miracles he actually wrought.

Another school of theologians find in the unity of will
between Jesus and his heavenly Father a reason why he should
be able, using a divine prerogative, to make the forces of the
outward world work in subordination to his mission of re-
demption. That there may be traced in human history a
Providence which orders outward event in reference to human
ends I fully maintain. But that Providence does not work by
miracle ; rather through the minds and hearts of men. The
theologians of whom I speak would have been the first, had
they been contemporaries of Jesus, to demand signs from him.
The point of view of Jesus seems to have been the opposite to
this. He came, not as a wonder-working master of the visible
world, but in order to do the will of Him that sent him, whether
that will was revealed in the order of the visible world, or in
the inner recesses of the heart. "Not my will but thine be
done " was the burden of his life.

Two of the best attested miracles of the life of our Lord,
using the word miracle strictly, are the drowning of the
Gadarene swine and the destruction of the barren fig-tree.
These are found in all the Synoptic Gospels. Put these
miracles are destructive, not beneficent. Would it really help
any Christian to feel sure that the record of them was
absolutely correct, or would it hurt any Christian to think
1 Cf. especially Gore! Bampton Lectures, p. 14.

CHRISTIAN MIRACLE 233

that that record arose out of misunderstandings ''. Yet if the
question be, as almost all theologians now admit, one of
evidence, these miracles must be accepted among the first. They
arc the main basis on which Christianity rests, if the claims
of Christianity rest on the historical evidence for miracles.
Surely this is a reductio ad absurdum. It is the moral miracles
of Christianity, and not these materialist legends, which prove
the divine source of the religion.

CHAPTER XIX

THE BIRTH AT BETHLEHEM

It was quite natural that when the earliest disciples began the
process of idealising their Master, they should first of all have
placed round his life a setting of miracle. The Jews sought
after marvels as the Greeks after wisdom. In the Gospels we
find abundant traces of the craving for supernatural signs which
marked the race and the time. The Apostles did not seek
merely to establish their Master's close relation to his heavenly
Father, by setting forth the devotion of Ids life and the
divineness of his teaching, but to raise him on a pedestal of
marvels. Frequently in his lifetime Jesus had sternly rebuked
this tendency. "An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after
a sign, and there shall no sign be given to it." And St. Paul
uses words very similar, " The Jews require a sign, and the
Greeks seek after wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified."
The time was fast coming when the wisdom or philosophy of
the Greeks was to run riot in the development of views of the
nature of Jesus : but meantime the longing for signs was to
have satisfaction in the nascent Church.

This Jewish passion for miracle was essentially materialist.
And naturally materialism strongly marks the miraculous
setting of the Master's life. That the whole life and doctrine
of Jesus was a moral miracle by no means satisfied his
followers. They must have physical miracles. Especially the
birth and the death of Jesus must be raised by a setting of
miracle into a world apart. Thus importance attached to the
lull' of I he Virgin-birth and the tale of die Resurrection of

77/ A" HI KTH AT HE 111 LE 11 EM

the Body, with which the Gospel narrative begins and
ends.

The miraculous character of the birth of Jesus is of course
a matter which dues not admit of proof or of disproof, but it
may be maintained either on historic or doctrinal grounds.
It is necessary here to discuss it briefly in both aspects.

As regards historic grounds it may be shown :

(1) That the narratives in which the birth is spoken of are,
as historic documents, very unsatisfactory.

(2) That the tale of a miraculous birth was not generally
accepted by the first Christians.

(3) That the tale would have arisen, in all probability,
whether true or not.

The first point, that the Gospel accounts of the circum-
stances of the birth of Jesus can establish no claim to be
regarded as historical in any objective sense of the word, may
be made clear without much difficulty. The narrative in
Mat (hew is briefer, that in Lule more ample and poetical ;
but neither will stand the test of modern historic criticism.

When one compares the two narratives together, one finds
not only that they come from different sources, but that they
are inconsistent one with the other. According to Matthew,
Joseph and Mary dwell at Bethlehem, where Jesus is born :
immediately on the birth comes the visit of the eastern sages ;
after that, Joseph flies with his family into Egypt to escape the
massacre of infants by Herod, and thence after a while returns
and settles at Nazareth, apparently for the first time, in order
that a prophecy may be fulfilled. According to Luke, Joseph
and Mary dwell at Nazareth, and come up to Bethlehem to
fulfil the conditions of a Roman census : Jesus is born at
Bethlehem, and there visited by shepherds, after which the
family at once returns to Nazareth.

The narrative of Matthew is built up of fulfilment of
prophecy, which we know to have been a very usual material
for the construction of ideal history. The star which went
before the magi, and stood over the inn, was no material
phenomenon, but the star which should come out of Jacob ; !

1 No doubt other elements were mingled in. When one of the Grand Lamas
of Thibet dies his disciples "know that he will soon reappear, being born in the

236 EX FLO RATIO EVANGELICA

the massacre by Herod is a reflection of the voice from Rama,
Rachel weeping for her children ; the flight into Egypt has as
its motive the text, " Out of Egypt have I called my son."
Dreams come in repeatedly to determine or to explain action.
And it is impossible to suppose that Herod would have ordered
a general massacre of children, when, according to the story, it
was the easiest thing in the world to discover the child who was
really dangerous. He had only to send one of his numerous
spies to follow the sages.

The narrative in Luke is of a very different character,
a delightful pastoral full of noble canticles, which has been
compared on good authority to the Psalms of Solomon. It is
a triple story with a regular refrain at i. 80, ii. 40, and
ii. 52.1 The multitude of the heavenly host which
appeared to the shepherds finds a parallel in the crowd
of gods and sons of gods who thronged to see the new-
born Buddha, and sang over his cradle how evil is banished
and joy increased in the whole world, since a master of
salvation is born.2 The whole narrative has an air familiar
to those acquainted with the birth-stories of heroes. At
the same time it is from the ethical and religious point of
view as superior to these, as the Bible is superior to other
religious books.

It is true that the writer makes some attempt at chrono-
logical and historical accuracy in his narrative. But that
attempt will certainly not bear criticism.

According to the narrative in the Third Gospel, the birth
of Jesus took place in the reign of Herod the Great, and at the
time of office of Quirinius. The historic facts appear to be the
following : Herod died in kc. 4, and was succeeded on the
throne of Judaea by his son Archelaus, who reigned some ten
years. On the expulsion of Archelaus, Judaea was placed under
the rule of Quirinius, Governor of Syria, who made a census

form 'it' an infant. If at this time they sec a rainbow, they take it as a BigD sent

by the departed Lama to guide them t<> his cradle. . . . When at last they find
the child they fall down and worship him."— Frazer, The Golden Bough, i. 13.

1 Each of these three verses records how a child grew in wisdom and the
favour of ( lod.

- Scvd'd, Did Kr.iinj, tin ,n run J,sn i,i s,in.,i l> rhiUtnissen :nr Buddha Sage,
p, 187. So at the birth of a king in Egypt, there was jubilation in heaven.

THE BIRTH AT BETHLEHEM 237

about A.i'. 7. * The ingenuity nf conservative commentators
has been taxed In the utmost to reconcile the story of the
Gospels with historic fact. But how vain their efforts have
been may be judged by any educated reader of works like that
of Schiirer. with whom Mommsen and Gardthausen agree.
Quirinius was nut Governor of Syria while Herod was Kin-.
It is more than doubtful if a census would have been carried
nut in a nominally independent state like that governed by
Herod. And, had there been a census, there would have been
no need for Joseph to go to Bethlehem to be registered, since
citizens were registered at their place of domicile, not at the
home of their ancestors. Nor even had Joseph made the journey
would Mary have accompanied him.2

Schiirer concludes his excursus with the remark, " All ways
of escape are closed, and there remains nothing but to
acknowledge that the evangelist has made his statement
trusting to imperfect information, so that it is not in accordance
with the facts of history." We cannot, however, do justice to
the writers of a past age unless we endeavour to adopt their
point of view. Probably Luke was not misled by imperfect
information, but in his endeavour to grasp what he considered
a greater truth sacrificed a lesser truth. To our thinking
chronology is the backbone of history. But the dominant fact
in the minds of the writers of the Gospels was that Jesus was
the Messiah, and therefore must in his life have conformed to
the prophecies referred to the Messiah. He must have been
born in Bethlehem, because it was written, " Out of thee
(Bethlehem) shall come a Governor, that shall rule my people
Israel." That being the case, Luke was probably led to accept
a current fable, by whom originated we shall never know, that
the parents of Jesus went from Nazareth, where they were
known to live, to Bethlehem, on the occasion of the census. The
census was an institution much hated and little understood by
the Jews, and it is but natural that their minds should be ill-
informed as to its exact nature. The tale of the census was

1 My authority is Schiirer, whose masterly discussion of the whole subject can
now be read in English, " The Jewish People in the 7'imc of Jesus Christ," div. i.
vol. ii. pp. 105-1 i:J.

2 In the note at the end of this chapter I have briefly discussed some recent
attempts to defend the historic value of Luke's story.

EX PLC < RATIO EVANGELICA

the most plausible explanation current of a thing that must
have taken place. No doubt the writers of the Gospels thought
the accordance of their life of Jesus with religious necessities
far more important than its accordance with recorded fact
of history.

And if we find the testimony of the Evangelists thus of a
subjective rather than of an objective character, when they
deal even with the time and the place of the birth of Jesus,
this is sure to be the case in a still higher degree when they
speak of his miraculous origin. This obviously could not be
established by testimony, but was essentially a matter of ideal
history. This assertion of miraculous origin seems to be based
mainly on a verse of Matthew (i. 20) : a verse which has an
appropriate place among warning dreams and heavenly signs.
The authority is an angel who appears to Joseph when he is
asleep, and the motive is the fulfilment of a misunderstood and
misinterpreted prophecy of Isaiah.

Certainly the early chapters of Mattlieiv and Luke furnish
proof that the story of the miraculous birth took its rise early.
But it was not the only explanation of the divine character of
the Founder which circulated in the early Church. It had
various rivals which it only by slow degrees ousted.

Professor Harnack writes : 1 " The birth of Jesus of the
Holy Ghost and the Virgin Mary certainly had no place in
the oldest preaching. That preaching began with" Jesus
Christ, son of David according to the flesh, son of God
according to the spirit (Rom. i. 3), perhaps with the baptism
of Christ by John and the descent of the Spirit upon him.
Compared therefore with the first preaching, the omission from
the Apostles' Creed of the Davidic Sonship, the baptism, and
the descent of the Spirit upon Jesus, and the substitution for
these of the birth from the Holy Ghost and the Virgin Mary
is an innovation." - Of course, however, when we use the word

1 Das Apostol. Qlaubenabeketmtniss, 25th edit. p. 24.

- Some early varianl readings in Matthew and Luke seem to belong to a time
in which the virgin-birth was not generally acknowledged. For instance, the
early Syrian version of tin' Codes Sinaitioos reads al Mull. i. it;, "Joseph, to
whom was betrothed Mary the Virgin, be^at Jesus." Ami Borne early texts of
Luke iii. 22, wherein the baptism of Jesus by John is described, read, "A void'
came from heaven which said, Thon arl my son, this day have 1 begotten thee."

THE BIRTH AT BETHLEHEM 239

innovation in this connection we must do bo with caution, Bince
the story of the virgin-birth was certainly widely spread in
the Church before the end of the firal century.

The Gospel of Mark is almost universally allowed to be
the earliest of the Gospels. Not only does the writer omit all
mention of the virgin-birth, hut beginning his work with the
baptism of John, he uses the very significant phrase, "The
beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ." Also he records
sayings and doings which cannot be reconciled with belief in a
supernatural birth. For example, he says1 that at the begin-
ning of the ministry of Jesus his mother and his brethren
sought to restrain him as one out of his mind. Now it seems
almost impossible that Mark can have represented the mother
of Jesus as doubting of his mission, if he accepted the talc of
the miraculous birth.

The author of the Fourth Gospel appears to have known
of the story of the virgin-birth. Indeed, at the time when he
wrote, it must have been known generally. But he seems to
have slighted it, and preferred another view, which cannot but
be regarded as more spiritual. He holds that in Jesus the
Word of God was incarnate. But some of his phrases seem
directed against the theory of a miraculous birth. He writes,
" It is the spirit that quickeneth, the flesh profiteth nothing."
And again he represents Jesus as explaining to the Jews the
nature of his divine sonship in the words, " Say ye of him
whom the Father hath sanctified and sent into the world, Thou
blasphemest, because I said I am the son of God ? " But it is
in the discourse to Nicodemus that the writer is most explicit.
There he puts in the mouth of Jesus a statement of a high law
which is fatal to the acceptance of a virgin-birth. " That
which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of
the spirit is spirit." Every man who would enter into life
must be born again from above, avcoOev. It seems to me
impossible that a writer who thus pointedly contrasts the flesh
and the spirit can have accepted a miraculous origin for the
body of his Master. Indeed, as we shall presently see, the
Logos doctrine of the Fourth Evangelist is clearly meant as an
alternative for the miraculous birth. He gives up the

1 iii. 21-35.

240 EXPLORATIO EVANGELICA

Jewish marvel for the Greek wisdom, ideal history for
doctrine.

The view of St. Paul is quite as clearly and definitely
stated in his Epistles. To him Jesus was the son of God
according to the spirit, but according to the flesh the son of
David. This sonship to David is asserted in various places in
the Gospels and Epistles ; and it implies descent from Joseph,
since Joseph was maintained by early Christianity to have
been a descendant of David, while the descent of Mary was
not known or not regarded. Paul seems not even to have
heard of the story of the miraculous birth. Had he known of
it, he would probably, with his passion for knowing Christ not
after the flesh, but after the spirit, have vigorously attacked it,
and prevented it from ever emerging from the cycle of fanciful
accounts of the childhood of Jesus, amidst which it originated,
to become part of the recognised Christian creed.1

Among moderns, Dr. H. A. W. Meyer, a very moderate
theologian, writes : 2 " Rightly have Mark and John excluded
these miraculous events from the Gospel narrative, which began
with the appearance of the Baptist, seeing that Jesus himself
never, even in the circle of his trusted disciples, refers to them :
while the disbelief of his brethren (John vii. 5) and the conduct
of Mary (Mark iii. 21) cannot be reconciled with them."

It must next be shown that the tale of the miraculous
birth, even if it were not true, would have been produced by*
the working of ordinary human tendencies under the conditions
of the ancient world.

It would have been strange indeed if phenomena, which in
popular belief always marked the birth of a heaven-sent
personality, had been wanting in this case. The following
quotation from Mr. Rhys Davids' little book on Buddhism 3
scarcely needs comment : " From Gautama's perfect wisdom,
according to Buddhist belief, his sinles.sness would follow as a
matter of course. He was the first and the greatest of the
Arahats. As a consequence of this doctrine, the belief soon

1 What view Pan] ami the Fourth Evangelist really held in regard to the

origin of their Master's divine nature will be further considered in the chapter on
Baptism (Cbap. XXXV.)

2 Comment, "n Luke, i. 5-38. ,; 1'. 182.

THE BIRTH AT BETHLEHEM 241

spran- up that In- could Mot have been, that he was not, born

as ordinary men are: that he had do earthly father; that he
descended of his own accord Lnto his mother's womb from his
throne in heaven; and that he gave unmistakable signs,
immediately after his birth, of his high character and of his
future greatness. Earth and heaven at his birth united to pay
him homage; the very trees hent of their own accord over his
mother, and the angels and archangels were present with their
help. His mother was the best and the purest of the daughters
of men, and his father was of royal lineage." Almost even-
word of this passage applies as well to Jesus as to Gautama.

Any one at all well acquainted with the facts of anthro-
pology will be aware that in this matter, as in many others,
Buddhism does but continue and develop a habit common
among primitive peoples.1 Wherever we make inquiry, in
Peru or in India, in New Zealand or Canada, we find that the
heroes who brought the tribes higher civilisation or improved
ways of living were of divine origin. Sometimes both parents
are divine ; more often the mother is human and the father
divine. The sons of God see the daughters of men that they
are fair, and the result is a race of heroes. This is merely a
way of piety among barbarians, who recognise in dim and halt-
ing fashion that " every good gift and every perfect gift is from
above."

There are various ways of regarding these stories in
relation to the birth of Jesus. AVe may consider them, as did
Justin Martyr, as the imitations of sublime truth by demons
who caricature divinely ordained events as the magicians of
Egypt by their enchantments copied the marvels of Moses. Or
we may regard them as local and partial adumbrations of a
great truth fully revealed in Christianity. Or we may regard
them as unripe fruit of the same tree of human nature of
which the birth stories of Christianity are the most perfect
production.

Perhaps a nearer parallel to the birth stories of Christianity
than can be found either in Greek or Hebrew' records may be
discovered in a remarkable series of legends which clustered
about the birth of Augustus, giving him as a father not Octavius,

1 On the whole (question see Hartland, The Story 0/ Perseus.
16

242 EXPLORATIO EVANGELICA

but Apollo. The Romans were not an imaginative race, and
Augustus stands out in the full blaze of historic light: yet
Suetonius ! has preserved for us a series of stories as to the
conception and infancy of the Emperor which offer quite a
startling analogy to those recorded in Matthew and Luke.

A prophecy misunderstood had determined the birth of
Jesus at Bethlehem, " Out of thee shall come a governor that
shall rule my people Israel." We are told that of old the wall
of Velitrse had been struck by lightning, and that it had been
on that occasion prophesied that out of Velitree should come
a mighty ruler. The Octavian family to which Augustus
belonged came from Velitrae.

Herod, on hearing from the mages of the birth of the
Messiah, took violent measures to destroy him. Before the
birth of Augustus an omen had taken place at Eome showing
that nature was preparing a king for the Eoman people. The
Senate, we are told, in alarm decreed that no child of that year
should be reared, but the decree was, by interested senators,
kept out of the archives and frustrated.

Even for the episode of Simeon and Anna there is a
parallel. On the day of Augustus' birth his father Octavius
came late to the Senate House, and one Nagidius, on hearing
what cause had delayed him, at once prophesied that a master
of the world was born.

Also the visit to the temple by Jesus in his twelfth year
may be compared with the tale that Augustus as an infant was
missed from his cradle, and found on the top of a tower facing
the rising sun, the embodiment of Apollo his father.

Whether any of these tales as to Augustus had any founda-
tion in fact we do not know. The historian is content to take
them as tales, and he well knows that if there were no portents
at the birth of so great a ruler, in the opinion of the time there
ought to be, and they must spring up, none knows how, in the
general consciousness of the race.

The tendency of the early Church to entwine with miracle

the birth of the Founder by no means rested content with the

tale of tin' Virgin-Birth. The earlier chapters of Luke in

particular almost belong to, at least lead on to, a great mass of

1 Snetoniua, Octaviamus, c. 94.

THE BIRTH AT BETHLEHEM 243

early Christian Literature dealing with tin- early years of Jesus
and with his mother's life in a vein of exaggerated thaumaturgy.
Tin- Gospel of St. Thomas represents Jesus as from his cradle a
worker of miracles. "He kills his comrades, changes them
into goats, blinds their parents, confounds his teachers, proving
to them that they do not understand the mysteries of the
alphabet; compels them to ask his pardon. People fly from
him as from a plague; Joseph in vain begs him to desist."1
Tasteless ami materialist exaggerations of this kind were so
grateful to the Christian feeling of the second and third
centuries, that the Apocryphal Gospels which contained them in
man} quarters superseded the more sober and spiritual narra-
tives of Matthew and Mark. The Gospel of the TnfancypoBBeA
in the Far East as the work of Peter and as the. Gospel par
excellence.

And by a natural transition, the lovers of the marvellous
passed on from the life of Jesus to that of Mary. The
so-called Protevawjel of James tells how she was born of aged
parents, her birth being preceded by an Annunciation like that
spoken of by Luke. Her marriage was accompanied by
miracle. Later works tell how at every step of her life the
divine power was interfering with the ordinary course of
nature for her benefit. Even the infancy of her mother Anne
is adorned with the fantastic broidery of a thaumaturgic
imagination.

These gospels had an immense vogue. And it is to them
that Christian art owes the greater part of its subjects. To
this Greece offers a ready parallel. Greek painting and
sculpture were inspired far less by the lofty poems of Homer
than by the imitative works of the Cyclic poets. So Christian
art goes for its subjects not to Mark and the Acts, but to the
first chapters of Luke, the Apocryphal Gospels and the spurious
Acts of the Apostles. It Mas, however, not only artists and
the common people who gladly received this cycle of works,
but grave Christian doctors like Epiphanius and Gregory of
Nyssa Mr. Cruttwell writes,2 "There was an immense number of
such stories current, some exquisitely beautiful, some grotesque,

1 Renau, L'Eglise Chrdtienne, p. 514.
2 Literary History of Early Christianity, i. 170.

244 EXPL0RAT10 EVANGEUCA

others superstitions and childish ; but all so suited to the
popular taste that the Church, being unable to compete with
them, adopted the sagacious course of recasting, expurgating,
and adopting them." The sagacity of this course cannot be
denied. But if the Church thus adapted history to popular
needs, what becomes of the authority of the Church as a
guarantee of sober fact of history ?

The miraculous birth and the thaumaturgic infancy of Jesus
are accepted in the Koran. It is there narrated how the child
yet in the cradle vindicates his mother's honour and perforins
a variety of tasteless marvels. So slight is the connection
between the Christianity of the heart and the miraculous
background of the Master's birth ! Mohammed accepts that
background ; Paul and John reject it. But it may be
expected of a critic who maintains the ideal origin of
the tale of the miraculous birth, that he should more
definitely indicate in what Christian circles he supposes it to
have arisen. It does not seem to have arisen among the
family of Jesus. To them the genealogic lists may be due,
but not what follows and is inconsistent with those lists. Nor
did the tale arise among the Gentile and Pauline churches.
The narratives in which it is set forth are thoroughly Hebrew
in thought and language. But though the mass of Judaising
Christians traced the descent of Jesus from David, and dis-
allowed the miraculous birth, it is likely that the opposite
tendency prevailed here and there among them. Precisely in
what circle the tale of the superhuman birth arose will
probably never be known. It seems not impossible that it
may have originated, like its rival the logos doctrine, in the
fertile soil of Alexandrian Judaism. The story of the flight
into Egypt occurs in Matthew's Gospel in close proximity to
the story of the birth at Bethlehem. Both may owe their
origin to some group of pious Alexandrian Jews. It was an
ancient custom in Egypt to maintain as a matter of ideal
history, one may almost say as a matter of doctrine, that many
of the kings were directly born of the sun-god. Maspdro says
of Alexander the Great that he went to Egypt as son of Philip,
and returned as the son of Cod.1 The Alexandrians strangely
1 Blasp6ro, Convmetti Ah eandrt devint d/ieu.

THE BIRTH AT BETHLEHEM 245

mingled Egyptian religious notions with Creek philosophy and
Jewish beliefs. It docs not seem unlikely that they maj have
combined the Egyptian doctrine of the divine parentage of
great kings with Jewish prophecies such as that in Isaiah,
" Behold a virgin Bhall conceive." This phrase has in the
Septuaginl a somewhat differenl meaning from what it has in
the Hebrew, and the Jews of Alexandria were accustomed to
interpret the Old Testament, as they interpreted Homer and
Plato, in very fanciful fashion. Of course this view docs uot
pretend to be more than a conjecture.

I think I may now claim to have established the contentions
with which I set out, that the birth tales in Matthew and
Luke are historically unsatisfactory, that they were not
generally accepted by the first Christians, and that, true or
not, such tales might naturally have arisen.

But of course it does not hence follow that the story of
the birth cannot be true, even historically. There may be
strong practical grounds for accepting it as a piece of history,
not indeed guaranteed by ordinary evidence, but certified by
authority, or necessary to explain the facts of the history of
the Church. This necessitates our passing for a short time
and with very cautious steps from the ground of history to that
of doctrine. It may be safely said that very few in our days
would have accepted the miraculous birth on merely historic
grounds. Most Christians who receive it do so on grounds
of doctrine. Being outside history properly so-called, it is
especially adapted for being accepted as a matter of ideal
history, if there be good practical reasons for such acceptation.

It must be allowed, in accordance with principles already
laid down, that the teaching of the virgin - birth would not
have gained the position which it has held in the history of
Christianity, if it had not stood for truth of some kind. It is
likely that those who in the early centuries of Christianity
held to it were less in the wrong, on the whole, than those
who rejected it. But, in my opinion, it will be necessary for
the present generation to reconsider many of the beliefs of
which this may be said. Of course it is useless to argue with
those who accept the virgin-birth on the authority of Scripture
as such, or on the authority of the Church. But I would

246 EXPLORATIO EVANGELICA

venture, with all diffidence, to defend the view that it is not
the highest Christian teaching.

It was a somewhat crude attempt to explain the nature
of the Founder. As such it naturally partakes of the
materialism which he seems to have constantly rebuked. A
woman once in his presence exclaimed, as we are told,1
" Blessed is the womb that bare thee, and the paps which thou
hast sucked." Any one who holds the tenet of the virgin-
birth would necessarily feel that she was expressing a most
exalted truth. Yet it would seem that something in the ex-
pression displeased Jesus, and he answered, " Yea, rather, blessed
are they that hear the word of God and keep it." The teaching
of Paul and of the Fourth Evangelist is also, as I have already
maintained, inconsistent with the tenet. M. Eeville observes
that, " Entre la notion du logos preexistent qui s'incarne dans
un homme, qui s'impose une telle tache sachant et voulant ce
qu'il fait, et la notion de la conception a jour fixe d'un etre
nouveau n'acquerant une personnalite distincte qu'au moment
de son entrde dans la vie humaine, il n'y a pas de commune
mesure." Finally, to many thoughtful minds, the acceptance
of the tenet of the virgin-birth seems to reduce the whole
human life of the Founder to a kind of mirage, to paint it with
colours " which never were on sea or land," to deprive the
Christian of real human relationship to his Master.

One feels disposed to regret, though the regret probably
only shows imperfect knowledge of circumstance, that an
earlier and rival view did not prevail over that of the virgin-
birth. There was a theory of which there are clear traces
in our Gospels, and which was accepted in the earliest teach-
ing, that the Holy Spirit became first united with Jesus at the
time of his baptism by John. The stories of the descending
dove, of the Temptation, and of the first proclamation of the
Gospel, all hang together and seem to denote what Mark terms
the "beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.'' [f, with Mark,
the Christian Church had from the first accepted this as the
beginning, it seems to a modern fancy that it would have been
better. Bui human tendencies must have their way in history.
It was necessary that a beginning ul' the life of JeSUS suitable

1 /,/'/' \i. 27.

THE BIRTH AT BETHLEHEM 247

for adornmenl by Legend and by art should arise. And
because that was necessary we are involved in difficulties, and
have to choose between the acceptance of unhistoric miracles
and the rejection of the teaching of early (though qoI the
earliest) Christianity. In human history, as in nature, among
the most usual sources of pain and disease is the survival of
institutions and beliefs which were once necessary to progress,
but have ceased to be so.

It is to me a matter of regret to have to speak so strongly
on a subject which, in the minds of a large proportion of
Christians, is wrapped up in religious awe. And, in accordance
with views elsewhere expressed, I am quite ready to allow that
this particular doctrine may in the minds of many occupy such
a place that it cannot l»e ejected without causing the downfall
of a whole structure of religious belief. It is of the very
nature of illusion that those who discern it to be illusion are
often less in the right than those who accept it as true. I
have not the least wish to persuade any Christians of this
class. It is not for them that I have written.

But a searching examination of this article of the creed
appears to liie quite necessary. I am convinced from observa-
tion of what has happened in Prussia, where in 184G the
Church Synod rejected this tenet, and from what is going on
among ourselves, that this particular view is absolutely doomed
by the progress of historic research. It is like a spar which
has been riddled with shot, and the wisest as well as the most
honest plan is to try to rid the ship of its weight. And the
tenet is not, either from the historical or the logical point of
view, the basis of the worship of the divine Son, but rather
of the worship of the Virgin Mother.

NOTE

Mi;. Gore and Professor Ramsay on the Birth

Recently, in his Dissertations, Mr. Gore has re-discussed this
matter, and tried to defend the current view. All critics are at one
in acknowledging the candour and sincerity of the writer. But a
good deal of his argument admits of a complete reply.

248 EXPLORATIO EVANGEL1CA

I should not complain of Mr. Gore for not arguing the matter
nil purely historic grounds. For, of course, from the strictly historic
point of view there is no evidence as regards the virgin-birth, nor
indeed in the nature of the case could there be any satisfactory
objective evidence. Those who should examine the actual facts not
as Christians, but as historical inquirers merely, would find that it
lay outside their scope. But it seems to me that Mr. Gore can be
blamed for mixing up in many instances doctrinal with historic
arguments. Unless these are kept apart, we cannot lay either
clearly before the mind.

Mr. Gore thinks it more likely that the virgin-birth was a
historic fact than that a belief in it, if unhistoric, should have
arisen among early Christians. The one is confessedly a miracle :
the other then, presumably, is a greater miracle. I have tried to
show that the rise of the belief, far from being supernatural, was
almost inevitable. He thinks that an acceptance of a physically
supernatural origin of Jesus is a necessary part of the doctrine of
the Incarnation. Here again I differ completely. But I do not
propose to discuss these matters with Mr. Gore. There is, however,
one ground on which we can meet, and that is the meaning and
history of the early Christian documents of the New Testament.

Mr. Gore takes the birth-narratives of Matthew and Luke as
serious history, regarding the putative father and the mother of
Jesus as responsible for them respectively. And he holds it possible
" to account for the silence of St. Mark, St. John, and St. Paul, so
far as it is a fact, while at the same time indicating evidence which
goes to show that these writers did in reality recognise the fact of
the virgin-birth."

If this position were defensible, Mr. Gore would have a shadow
of a case. Of course he could not hope actually to demonstrate the
historic character of the virgin-birth, but he could at all events
prove that the earliest Christians were unanimous in accepting
it, and that such acceptance lay near the foundations of the
faith.

But the position is not defensible. I have shown, or tried to
show, in the last chapter: (1) that the writer of the Fourth Gospel
probably knew of the story of the virgin-birth, and rejected it; (2)
that Paul probably did not know of it, but rejected it by anticipa-
tion; (3) that in the Synoptic Gospels there are many passages
inconsistent with it; and (I) that the passages of Matthew and Luke
which give 'In' story are so full of improbabilities and so mixed
with marvels that it is impossible to regard them as serious
historical documents.

We have here questions of historic and Literary criticism which
'.hi be fairly argued, on principles ascertained and in general use in

THE BIRTH A T BETHLEHEM 240

all historic schools. They are oot theological questions, but such
\ery studenl of history has to take up everyday. Ami I would
ask the reader accustomed to the historic discussion of the texts oi
Herodotus, Thucydides, and Suetonius, whether the views in my texi
or Mr. Gore's are most in accordance with ordinary canons of
criticism. When men are discussing doctrinal questions they may
be excused for using philosophic and theological arguments. Bui
Mr. (Ion's assertions as to our historic documents must either be
accepted on authority or else discussed on ordinary critical and
historic grounds.

I will give a few specimens of Mr. Gore's manner of arguing,
to show that among his many talents and intellectual virtues
we cannot include historic imagination or a mastery of historic
method.

Take the following (p. 13): "We cannot conceive that period
immediately following the resurrection passing without inquiry,
systematic inquiry, into the circumstances of our Lord's birth.' Mr.
(lore stands just in the position taken up by Paley in the last
century, before the birth of modern criticism. The question is not
what we should do under certain circumstances, but what the
earliest Christians would do. And to suppose that they would at
such a time occupy themselves with, or care about, historic proofs is
to set aside all our evidence. It is no doubt true that in the early
Church there was a desire to hear the testimony of eye-witnesses of
the deeds and the words of the Master, and that this was one main
cause of the great respect which attached to the Apostles. Writers
like Papias were very anxious to attach a chain of tradition between
themselves and Jesus. Notwithstanding, we know in what a
wonderful way the deeds of the Master were developed for subjective
reasons. And in such a matter as the circumstances of the
birth there is no indication of a serious search for fact; nor were
the peasantry of Judsea and Galilee in the least degree trained in
the principles of historic search and the methods of judging of
evidence.1 Only one man among the first generation of Christians
is really known to us : St. Paul. Did he, after his conversion, make
" systematic inquiry into the circumstances of our Lord's birth
Let him answer for himself. " I certify you, brethren, that the
gospel which was preached of me is not after man, neither was I
taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ."' " I conferred not
with flesh and blood ; neither went I up to Jerusalem to them which
were apostles before me ; but I went into Arabia, and returned
again unto Damascus." To suppose that people of that age and

1 As Renau well says, " La curiosite- objective, qui ne se propose d'autre bat
que tie savoir aus.si exactement que possible la realite des faits, est une chose dont
il n'y a presqnepas d'exemple en orient." — Lcs itvangilcs, p. 90.

EXP LOR A TIO £ VA NGELICA

that country cared about the pedantry of historic research is to
mistake the conditions of the problem before us.

Or take a writer of the next generation, the author of the
Clementine Epistle to the Corinthians. He regards the resurrection
of Jesus Christ as one great pledge of the resurrection of all
believers. According to Mr. Gore he should have made diligent
inquiries into the evidence for that resurrection as historic fact.
Did he do so 1 It is hardly likely. For he relies with equal confi-
dence on the periodical miracle of the resurrection of the phoenix
of Arabia, the pious bird that buries its father. To him then the
Herodotean tale of the phoenix is sober fact. Does not this
observation suggest that the tests of historic truth were not
quite the same for the fathers of early Christianity as they are
for us 1

If we suppose the story in Luke to be historic, Ave must accept
the wildest improbabilities, not to say impossibilities. If we
suppose it to be a theory, in a moment it falls into line with all
our knowledge, and a dozen parallels are forthcoming. Few in our
day would regard it as historic but for the wish to supply a historic
basis for the doctrine of the Incarnation. If this be so, the really
straightforward course is not to mix up into an incongruous whole
doctrinal necessities and historic criticisms, but to retain the doctrine
of the Incarnation, and yet to allow that the virgin-birth cannot be
admitted into the web of history, but stands outside it.

At p. 39 Mr. Gore observes that the genealogies of the
Synoptists cannot be used to prove the belief in an actual descent of
Jesus from Joseph, because they stand close to narratives of the
virgin-birth. "If the Evangelists who put them there did not think
they were incompatible with the virgin-birth, it cannot be argued
that their original compilers did." Mr. Gore must be acquainted
with the fact, one of the most familiar to all students of ancient
history, that ancient compilers frequently insert in their narratives
inconsistent accounts of one event taken from various sources. It
is most probable that in our texts of Matthew and Luke the
authors incorporated from one source the genealogy implying the
descent from Joseph', and from another source the tale of the virgin-
birth. How they reconciled them we know not ; but this is precisely a
difficulty which is continually meeting us in reading the works
of the ancients. Their sense of inconsistency was not nearly so
acute as ours has become.

One more instance may suffice. Mr. Gore observes (p. •"> I ) that
it is nut improbable "that some oriental astrologers should have
had their thoughts directed towards Jerusalem, and should have
paid a visit there, under the attraction of some celestial
phenomenon, to seek a heaven-seni king." Certainlj it is not very

THE BIRTH AT BETHLEHEM 251

improbable; but that is not tin1 <piestion. The question is, whal
evidence there is of such having been the fact. If we turn to
the narrative in Matthew, we find mention not of a "celestial
phenomenon," but of a star which the astrologers saw in the east.
It was not a conjunction of planets or a meteor, but a sign which
unit before the travellers and stood over where the young child
was. Bere again it is a question of evidence. And for the
objective existence of a marvel of this kind, a historical inquirer
needs something more than a statement set in such surroundings
in an anonymous historical writing.

Later on (p. 67), Mr. Gore admits that his historical argument
is guided by a purpose. To admit that the historic reality of the
vir-in birth is doubtful "would be to strike a mortal blow at the
authority of the Christian Church as a guide to religious truth in
any real sense." It is rash to mix up religious or doctrinal truth
thus with historic accuracy. If the two things be inseparable, then
the authority of the Church is already lost. The Christian Church
at first believed passionately in the near advent of her Lord. Histori-
cally, she was totally mistaken. She believed in the literal truth
of the earlier chapters of Genesis, and used that belief as a basis of
doctrine. If a theologian wishes to maintain the authority of the
( 'hurch in matters of history his only logical course is to subscribe
to Papal infallibility. Mr. Gore says that he cannot be accused of
an uncritical or unhistoric disposition in dealing with history. But
the answer is that it is not possible to deal with early Christian
history critically, if we are determined to regard certain views of it
as established by the authority of the Christian Church. Mr.
Cruttwell, as we have seen, writes of the tales of the infancy, " The
Church being unable to compete with them, adopted them." That
phrase shows a far juster view than Mr. Gore's of the early Church's
relation to history.

Mr. Gore is well acquainted with the manner in which ancient
history is taught in our days. He knows with how much scepticism
the statements of ancient historians are received ; that they are
judged not by the plausibility of their stories, but by considerations
of evidence and analogy. The educated world has many quarrels
as to the comparative value of authors, the facts of ancient history,
and the like ; but as to the general methods of historic investigation
it is united. Berlin and Vienna, Paris and Florence, Oxford and
Harvard, are in this matter at one. And those who are expected
in future to accept as a fact of objective history the virgin-birth of
Jesus must be kept away from this learned consensus, must be
trained not in the breezy air of the Universities, but in the sheltered
cloisters of theological academies. The Koman Church knows this
well : is the Anglican Church prepared to follow its lead 1

252 EXPL0RAT10 EVANGEL1CA

The doctrinal aspect of the virgin-birth I do not wish to discuss
at any length. But the vieAV taken in the present book seems to
me as defensible on doctrinal as on historical grounds. I can
imagine some one propounding the statement of the Creed to the
Fourth Evangelist, and his crushing reply, " That which is born of
the Mesh is flesh, and that which is born of the spirit is spirit." 1
can imagine St. Paul replying, " Christ was the son of David after
the flesh, but the Son of Cod after the spirit." And I do not
doubt that the love of the miraculous which gave origin to the
statement would have been wholly distasteful to the Founder of
Christianity himself. In this case then, at least, I can find no reason
to torture history in order to find a basis in it for a doctrine which
is out of harmony with modern ways of thought.

Finally, I would suggest that if there be any doctrinal or
theological justification of the story of the virgin-birth, the same
justification exists also for the story of the immaculate nature of
the Virgin. One can easily understand that in past days it might
be held that the one doctrine rested on a historic basis which did
not exist in the case of the other. But, as I conceive, the growth
of historic criticism has invalidated this distinction, and left the two
doctrines standing on one basis. Dr. Hort1 long ago observed, "I
have been persuaded for many years that Mary-worship and ' Jesus '-
worship have very much in common in their causes and their
results."

Since the above pages were written a little book by Professor
\V. M. Ramsay 2 has appeared, in which the question of the place
of birth of Jesus has been argued afresh, and the credibility of
Luke's narrative defended. Mr. Ramsay does not start from quite
the same point as Mr. Gore. Having given close attention to the
narrative in Acts, he regards the author of it as an exact historian,
and is concerned to defend the same writer from the charge of
untrustworthiness in the early chapters of the Third Gospel. What
is still more to the point, Mr. Ramsa}' has new documents to cite
which have some bearing on the census. His attempt is a piece of
legitimate historical criticism. Personally, I should have been well
pleased if he had made out his case. The setting up of historic
fact by the aid of ancient documents recently discovered is a task
with which I have strong sympathy.'1 But I do not think that Mr.
Ramsay has proved his point.

His starting-point, tlie thorough credibility of Luke, will be
conceded by i'rw critics. Dr. Sanday remarks thai he is too

1 Life oj /•'. .A ./. Sort, ii. 50.
- Was Christ born at Bethlehem t 1S98.
New Chapters in Greek History^ Preface.

THE 1UK1H AT BETHLEHEM

'■S3

sanguine in regard to the accuracy of this writer. Renan
farther, and says of Luke, " Le vrai materiel n'est rien pourlui;
1'idee, le but dogmatique el moral, -nut tout."1 And if in conse
quence of Mr. Ramsay's valuable researches in Asia .Minor in regard
to the Acts, we take smnc discount from Renan's saying, it is yet
in the main the decision of criticism. .Mr. Ramsay praises the
literary quality in Luke's work, and quite rightly. But Literary
quality and exactness seldom go together. Any one who has to
deal with Oxford undergraduates finds that a sense of style, accom-
panied by strict personal truthfulness, may go with an astonishing
inability to judge of evidence or to discern degrees of probability.
If Luke had had any sense of the canons of evidence, he would
scarcely have written a history of Paul without any reference to
Paul's Epistles, which were easily accessible.

I scarcely dare touch the arguments of Professor Ramsay. In
any summary account of them one is sure to do them imperfect
justice, and they are so delicate that a little rough handling might
spoil their points. His main contentions are the following :
Documentary evidence which has recently come to light in Ekrypt
proves that an enrolment of the population of that country took
place every fourteen years from the time of Augustus onwards.
Such an enrolment would fall in the year B.C. 9. There are some
indications that such a custom may have prevailed also in Syria.
In the case of Palestine, reasons may be given why Herod should
have postponed the enrolment to B.C. 7-6, in which year it is not
improbable that Quirinius may have been, not Governor of Syria,
but in the exercise of a military command there. The enrolment
was a different institution from the Roman census or valuation : its
main purpose being to ascertain the number of the population. If
Herod made an enrolment, he may, to pacify Jewish feeling, have
made it rather by tribes than by districts. Tims in the year of the
nativity, which Professor Ramsay takes to be B.C. G, an enrolment
of the Jews by tribes may have been in progress, and Quirinius may
at that time have held an important post in Syria.

In dealing with Professor Ramsay's views, we must clearly
distinguish two things : the date and place of the birth, and the
miraculous nature of the birth. It is only as regards the first of
these that Mr. Ramsay tries to support the tale of Luke. If his
contentions be allowed, the story of the virgin-birth still stands
outside history. But even if one allows the fullest value to Mr.
Kamsay's delicate structure of hypotheses and possibilities, it does
not go far. It does not seem to me even to attempt to meet the
main difficulties of the tale of Luke, such as Joseph's journey to
Bethlehem and Mary's journey with him.

1 Les fivangiles, p. 262.

254 EXPLORATIO EVANGELICA

It is in fact little more than the chronology of Luke that Mr.
Ramsay tries to rescue, and that by substituting a most elaborate
and intricate theory for the simple and obvious view accepted by
such authorities as Mommsen and Schurer. And to defend Luke's
chronology is of small avail, since, as Mr. Ramsay himself observes
(p. 203), " Luke had little of the sense for chronology, the value of
which, in clearly understanding or describing any series of incidents,
had not been appreciated so early as the first century." In another
place (p. 204) Mr. Ramsay writes, in words nearly agreeing with
my own, " Abstract scientific interest in the chronology of the
Gospel did not exist among his readers. What they were concerned
with was its truth ; and that was gathered from the Saviour's
teaching, from his statements about himself." Mr. Ramsay has
something of the historic imagination, which, in my opinion, Mr.
Gore lacks, and his obiter dicta are of far more value than his main
argument.

Mr. Ramsay sees clearly that his historic arguments must finally
rest on a dogmatic substruction. "They only will accept" Luke's
narrative, " who for other reasons have come to the conclusion that
there is no adequate and rational explanation of the coming of
Christianity into the world, except through the direct and ' miracu-
lous ' intervention of divine power." I hold as strongly as Mr.
Ramsay that such intervention really took place. But this fact
does not give special credibility to the tale of Luke any more than
to the various views as to the birth held by Matthew or John or
Paul, or any other early Christian writer.

The question which Mr. Ramsay sets before himself is, Was
Christ born at Bethlehem 1 I apprehend the strictly correct answer
to this question to be as follows : When and where the Christ was
born is matter of doctrine, not history ; but according to all historic
probability Jesus of Nazareth was born at Nazareth.

CHAPTEB XX

TIIK PHYSICAL RESUBRECTION AND ASCENSION

The tale of the physical resurrection of Jesus belongs evidently
to the same circle of thought as that of the miraculous birth.
This tale also shows a love of the marvellous, is deeply tinged
with materialism, and rests on a historical substruction which
falls to pieces on a careful examination. That the disciples
had an intense conviction that they had intercourse with their
Master after his death cannot be doubted. And that this
conviction was the salvation of mankind is also historic fact.
But the story of the resurrection of the body of Jesus stands
on quite another footing, and offers the greatest difficulty to
any educated modern Christian. At the same time it must
be allowed that the resurrection, when approached from the
side of historic criticism, offers as great difficulties as when
approached from the side of Christian belief. It is the crux
of all restorations of the life of Jesus.

If we place side by side the accounts of the various appear-
ances of Jesus to his disciples after the crucifixion we shall
soon find that these accounts are not to be reconciled together
by any ingenuity. It is evident that at the time when the
Gospels and the Epistles of St. Paul were written there was a
mass of floating legend on the subject, various parts of which
commended themselves to various disciples. The account in
Mark is the simplest and one of the most ancient. It is
contained in the first eight verses of the sixteenth chapter, the
remainder of ,hat chapter being, as critics suppose, an
addition. Here we have only a narration how the two Marys

EX FLORA TIO EVANGELICA

went to the sepulchre early in the morning of the first day of
the week, and found therein, in the place of the body of Jesus,
a young man in a white robe who told them that Jesus had
arisen and gone before them into Galilee. Quite inconsistent
with this narrative, though equally simple and free from the
marvellous, is the beginning of the twentieth chapter of the
Fourth Gospel, which seems, like many historical portions of
that Gospel, to be based on actual tradition. In that account
we read how Mary Magdalene first reported the tomb empty,
and how Peter and John ran in haste to the sepulchre, and
rinding it to be as she had said, went back to their own home ;
the first sight of angels and of the risen Lord appearing to
Mary when she was left alone. Mary Magdalene, it should
be observed, was a woman out of whom Jesus had cast seven
devils, by which phrase we may probably understand that she
was subject to nervous derangement : thus in a matter of
visions her evidence would be of very little value. The great
accretion of stories which are told in this connection by the
other evangelists have not the same air of verisimilitude, nor
are they to be reconciled together, or with the earliest account
of the resurrection which we possess, that of St. Paul.

One of the most curious features of the accounts of the
resurrection in the Gospels is the way in which the resurrec-
tion of the body is insisted on. It is true that the body of the
risen Jesus passed through closed doors, but yet it retained
most of the characters of the Mesh. At the various appearances
Jesus ate and drank ; the disciples laid hold on his feet ; Thomas
not only saw but felt him, with all the wounds of his death
still unhealed. And we are told that this body mounted in
the sight of the faithful towards heaven, until a cloud received
it out of their sight. Of course, at a time when body and
spirit were, at all events in the minds of the uneducated, so
imperfectly distinguished that continued life after death was
supposed to imply the continued existence of the body ; and
at a time when heaven was popularly supposed to be an arch
vaulted above our heads, where was the abode <»(' God and the
angels, such stories as these might well seem credible. But to
us who know more accurately the distinction between body
and spirit, and who have penetrated the secrets of space more

THE PHYSICAL RESURRECTION AND ASCENSION 257

completely, they cannot but Beem materialistic. Very often,
instead of being a help to faith, a belief in the literal truth
of the Christian titles of the resurrection is an impediment
to it.1

Another notable point in the Gospel narratives is that the
disciples who saw their risen Lord only recognised him after a
time, and with difficulty. The disciples who went to Emmaus
walked with him, and knew him not. Mary Magdalene
supposed him to be the gardener. When Jesus appeared to
the eleven in Galilee some of them doubted. "When he spoke
to them from the shore as they were fishing they did not for a
while recognise him. We even find the remarkable phrase,
■ After that he appeared in another form 2 unto two of them."
All this seems naturally to point to the gradual growth of a
cycle of legend.

Lut amid the unsatisfactory details of the synoptic accounts
of the resurrection we may cull a few facts which seem to be
historic.

In the first place, it seems that the resurrection of their
Master was wholly unexpected by the disciples. When women
reported to the Apostles that they had seen the Lord, the story
appeared to them but idle talk. And the Marys themselves
had gone, early in the morning of the first day in the week,
with spices in order to embalm the body of Jesus. Now, as
M. Eeville well observes,3 " On n'embaume pas un corps dont
on attend la resurrection d'un moment a l'autre." And the
unexpectedness of the resurrection tells in more than one
direction. It proves that Jesus cannot have foretold that
resurrection, at all events in a manner intelligible to the
Apostles. And it also proves that some actual experiences of
fact must have taken place before the incredulous despair of
the Apostles could be changed to confident belief. What were
these experiences ?

It is very doubtful if history will ever be able to answer
that question. The two simplest accounts of the resurrection,

1 The unsatisfactoriness of the accounts of the resurrection regarded from
the historical point of view has been well set forth by Greg (The Creed of
Christendom) and Macan (The Resurrection of Jesus Christ).

- Mark xvi. 12. 3 Jesus tie Nazareth, ii. 433.

17

258 EXPLORATIO EVANGELICA

those of Mark and John, centre notably in the empty grave.
Hence M. Eeville seems to have some justification for his
statement,1 " Le point de depart de toute discussion concernant
la resurrection de Jesus, c'est done le fait materiel que, le
matin du dimanche qui suivit la crucifixion, le tombeau dans
lequel son corps avait ete depose fut trouve vide." Allowing
this emptiness of the grave to be the central fact, it might be
accounted for in various ways. Of course the disciples explained
it by a physical resurrection ; the Jews are reported to have
said that the disciples had stolen the body. This last theory
is a very inadequate way of accounting for the facts. A
variant story, of which we find a trace in Tertulliau, was that
the gardener who held the garden around the tomb had removed
the body of Jesus for fear of frequent visits of the Galileans.
M. Eeville thinks the last tale one not to be lightly thrown
aside by historic research ; but, of course, it will be highly
repugnant to most modern Christians. The view that Jesus
had not really died upon the cross, but merely fainted, has
found some adherents among able critics. In my opinion the
empty grave offers us a problem which objective history can
never solve.

It was believed by the first disciples, howsoever the belief
may have arisen, that their Lord was not removed from
them by death, but remained among them, to guide and to aid.
That being the case, it was inevitable that they should also see
him with outward eyes. The belief necessarily found for itself
an external manifestation. And by the same inevitable
necessity the character of the appearances of the risen Master
was determined by the existing beliefs of the disciples. They
were not Greeks, but Jews, and therefore the appearance of the
spirit of their Master without corporeal embodiment would not
be possible. At the time they expected a resurrection in the
flesh, and therefore they held that a resurrection in the flesh
had taken place, in spite of such phenomena as that the Master
appeared among them when the doors were shut.

When we turn to Paul's story of the resurrection we
breathe a purer air. " He was seen of Cephas, then of the
twelve: after that, he was seen of above live hundred brethren
1 Jim ■ dt Nazareth, ii. 153.

THE PHYSICAL RESURRECTION AND ASCENSION 259

at once ; of whom the greater part remain unto this present,
but Borne are fallen asleep. After that, he was seen of James ;
then nf all the apostles. And last of all he was seen of me
also."1

Paul was, as we know, not strongly interested as to
the facts of the life of his Master. But in this particular matter
uf the resurrection he does profess to receive his account not
t'n mi direct revelation to himself, but from the tradition of the
early disciples. On the whole his narrative is not merely the
earliest that we have, but the most trustworthy. "We may
note a few points in regard to it. First, that he regards Peter
as the first witness. We have already seen in what curious
fashion miracles tend to cling about the person of Peter.
Second, that he says nothing of the circumstances of the
appearances, except that, generally speaking, he places them on
the same footing as the appearances of Jesus to himself. The
materialism of the open wounds is here altogether wanting.
Paul fully grasps the truth that the essential fact of the
resurrection is the presence of the spirit of Jesus among his
disciples, and that in this, as in other cases, " the flesh profiteth
nothing."

But does not Paul himself, an objector may say, declare
that if Christ be not risen our faith is vain ? Certainly
he does. But by the resurrection of Christ Paul means
primarily the spiritual resurrection. " It is Christ that died,
yea, rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of
God, who also maketh intercession for us." No doubt Paul
also believed in the physical resurrection of Christ, just as he
also believed in the physical resurrection, though in a changed
and spiritual body, of all the dead ; and this remnant of
materialism still clinging to his pure spirituality ruins for
idealists the sublime rhetoric of the fifteenth chapter of the
First Corinthian Epistle. But how subordinate in his beliefs
the material resurrection was in comparison with the spiritual
appears earlier in that same chapter, in which he places the
appearance of Christ to himself on precisely the same level as
the appearance to Peter and to James. We may fairly say with
St. Paul, " Unless Christ be risen, the Christian faith is vain,"

1 1 Cor. xv. 5.

;>6o EXPLORATIO EVANGELICA

if, with him, we mean by the rising of Christ the spread of his
power in the hearts of men, and his continued inspiration of
the Church.

The same divergence of testimony which marks the
Synoptic accounts of the physical resurrection marks also the
accounts of the events which followed. According to Matthew,
the eleven went almost at once to a mountain in Galilee, where
Jesus had promised to meet them, and there worshipped him,
though, as we are told, some doubted. According to Luke,
the eleven were expressly told to remain in Jerusalem until
they should receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, and they obeyed
the injunction. Now if any fact would seem to be matter of
sober history, it is the fact that the Apostles did or did not
continue in Jerusalem after their Master's death. Yet in
regard to so simple a matter we have divergent accounts, and
no objective certainty.

As regards the Ascension, our accounts are unsatisfactory
in an even greater degree. " In some of the oldest accounts,"
Harnack observes,1 " the resurrection and the sitting at the
right hand of God are taken as parts of the same act, without
mention of any ascension. In the Epistle of Barnabas both
resurrection and ascension happen in one day, and only the
Acts of the Apostles, in the New Testament, tells us that forty
days elapsed between the two. Other ancient authorities 2 give
us again a different story, and make the interval eighteen
months." Paul, as we have seen, does not mention a physical
ascension, nor does Matthew.

The fact is that some account of an ascension became a
necessity as soon as the corporeal resurrection from the dead
was accepted. The body of the Master had left the tomb.
What further account was to be given of it ? Could it merely
return to the tomb? Surely not. What really became of
the body of the crucified Jesus is a problem which history is
utterly powerless to solve. We may have theories; but we
can never have any trustworthy knowledge. And naturally
faith filled the gap. When the minds of the early Christiana

1 Ajxist. (llanbi nsbrkatntiuss, p. 25.

- Prof. Bwete, however, points out that this view was only taken by the
Valcntinians.

THE PHYSICAL RESURRECTION AND ASCENSION 261

were dwelling 00 the passing of their Master into heaven, it
was natural that their imaginations should he guided by the
tales with which from infancy they had been familiar. They
would remember how Elijah had been carried away in the Bight

of the sons of the prophets by a chariot of fire and horses of
fire, and went up by a whirlwind into heaven. And on that
analogy a story of the ascension of the body of the Master
would naturally fashion itself, and would survive because suited
to its surroundings.

The great historic difficulties which hang about the Insur-
rection and the Ascension cannot be denied by any open-
minded person. But some candid critics may be disposed to
ask why, supposing objective history to be beyond recovery,
ideal history should not be left in possession of the field. "If
you can show what really happened at the time," they will say,
" we are quite willing to accept new views. But in the absence
of historic certainty, we are at liberty to accept any view which
cannot be disproved, and which tallies with our Christian be-
liefs." This argument seems to me a sound one, up to a certain
point. The continued presence of Christ with the disciples
was an experience, and what one desiderates is merely the most
reasonable explanation of the fact. But our candid critic has not
met the real objection to the tale of the physical resurrection :
namely, its radical materialism. It is not the belief of the
disciples that they saw their Lord which raises any difficulty.
What they felt in their inmost hearts they may well have seen
with their outward eyes. It is the eating and drinking, the
thrusting of Thomas's hand into his Master's side, the bodily
disappearance into the clouds, which make our difficulty.
Some modern Christians carry on the tale to its logical end,
and think that the body of Jesus is still an object of worship
to the saints in heaven. All this repels the man of science
and offends the spiritual. Yet it is easy to see that at the
time this particular form of the story of the Resurrection was
the only one which could find credence. Even the Fourth
Evangelist, most spiritual of Christian writers, accepts it. But
he adds to the narrative of Thomas's conversion a phrase of deep
meaning, which seems like a protest against the materialism to
which he was obliged to give way: " Blessed are they that have

262 EXPLORATIO EVANGELIC A

not seen, and yet have believed." We may judge that those
who rejected the physical resurrection were in most cases those
who denied that Christ survived the cross. But with us the
case is different. The materialist circumstances of the tale of
the Resurrection are now an impediment rather than a help to
faith. And it is a question whether, in mere deference to
authority, we need continue to carry round our necks this
weight of dead science and unhistoric theory.

CHAPTER XXI

THE DESCENT INTO HADES

It is a notable illustration of the great intellectual and religious
gap which lies between us and the Creeds of the early Church
that they dwell upon some things which have to us become
indifferent or unmeaning, and say little of some thiugs wdiich
are to us all-essential. The doctrine of the Living Christ, which
is the life-breath of Evangelical Christianity, is at least very
inadequately treated in the Creeds, as well as in the Articles of
the Church of England. But, on the other hand, Creeds and
Articles alike dwell on matters almost foreign to the modern
intellect. I speak especially of the two tenets, mentioned in
the Creeds, and in the third and fourth Articles, of the Descent
of Christ into Hell or Hades, and of the Second Advent.

1 In the shortest of all the Articles of the Church of England
we read, " As Christ died for us, and was buried, so also is it
to be believed that he went down into hell." This briefness
and the absence alike of explanation and of emphasis are
sufficiently expressive, as if the compilers of the Articles could
not well leave out a thesis which finds a place in the Apostles'
Creed, though not in that of Nicrea. We may in fact venture
to call the doctrine of the Descent into Hades a piece of dead
wood from the tree of Christian doctrine. This very want of
actuality in the doctrine fits it the better for purposes of
historical investigation. We can venture to handle it, not
indeed without reverence, but without that ever-present fear

1 I repeat here some paragraphs of a paper which appeared in the Co, /.tem-
porary Rcvieio in March 1895.

264 EXPLORATIO EVANGELIC A

of hurting the Christian conscience, which makes it so difficult
to analyse many of the doctrines of Christianity in the fearless
fashion in which they must be treated when approached from
the purely historical point of view.

In his remarkable paper on the Apostles' Creed,1 Harnack
writes as follows :

" The phrase descendit ad inferna {inferos) first appears, so
far as I know, in the baptismal confession of the Church of
Aquileia ; after that, not only in Gallic confessions, but in the
Irish and elsewhere. In the East it first makes its appearance
in the confession of the Fourth Synod of Sirmium, a.d. 359.
It is not found in the Creeds of Nicasa and Constantinople.
But as early as the second century we trace in literature, alike
in the writings of fathers and heretics, the notion that Christ
descended into the lower world, and there preached, as before
him John the Baptist, and after him the Apostles."

Harnack does not here decide whether the doctrine
started with passages in our New Testament. And this caution
seems justified, because the authoritative phrases in professedly
Apostolic writings are by no means easy of explanation. They
are, as is well known, two. First we have the Pauline saying
(Ephesians iv. 9), "Now this, he ascended, what is it but
that he also descended into the lower parts of the earth."
And, second, we have the phrase in 1 Peter iii. 1 8 : Christ,
" being put to death in the flesh, but quickened in the spirit ;
in which also he went and preached unto the spirits in prison,
which aforetime were disobedient, when the long suffering of
God waited in the days of Noah." The Pauline phrase may
imply no more than death, and is so vague as scarcely to give
an opening for discussion, but the Petriue is far more definite,
and demands some attention. Let us for a moment consider it
in the light of a historic record. I can easily imagine (analogies
are plentiful enough) that some one might find in it a state-
ment made by our Lord after his resurrection to St. Peter, and
by him committed to writing. Such views there are no
means, so far as I know, of directly refuting. It is only
possible to point out the general historic improbabilities

1 Page 28 of the 25th edition. A translation of this paper by Mis.
Humphry Ward is published in the Nineteenth Century (July 1893).

THE DESCENT INTO HADES 265

which they involve. This particular passage the less requires
;i \crv serious treatment, partly because it is strongly
suspected <>f being an interpolation, partly because its mean-
ing is very obscure. On the face of it, it refers to the
antediluvians who rejected the preaching of Noah; the key
of it probably rests in some theory or fancy of contem-
porary Judaism. Among the many interpretations given of
it, several find no connection with the inferi at all. As
any discussion of them would lead us too far afield, I hope it
may not be too bold to merely mask the fortress as one which
cannot be stormed, and pass on, leaving it in the rear. Since
the Apostolic writings and those of the Christian Fathers alike
afford no secure historic basis for the Drsmtsus, we cannot do
better than adhere to the opinion of the late Bishop of
Carlisle,1 who regards it as "obvious that" (the Descensus)
" can in no manner or degree depend upon history ; it is
essentially transcendental, supernatural, hyper-historical."

If, however, the tale be thus removed from the field of
historic fact to that of pious construction, it at once becomes
Legitimate to investigate it according to the methods of an-
thropology and comparative religion, to search for its origin in
previous beliefs, and for its relation to Jewish and Gentile
mythology. In thus treating it I shall to some degree antici-
pate the line of thought more fully worked out when I come
to deal with what are in a stricter sense the doctrines of
Christianity. This may perhaps have the advantage of pre-
paring the reader's mind for the method I shall hereafter-
follow.

I think it more than probable, almost demonstrable, that
the notion of the Descent into Hades arose under the influence
of a particular school of Pagan mythology, that of the Orphists,
and was, like many another Pagan belief, admitted into
Christianity after baptism into the name of Christ.2 "We must
speak briefly as to the views of Hades held by this school.

It was the teaching of the Orphist schools as to the future
world which formed the kernel of all their doctrine, and by

1 Goodwin, The Foundations of the Creed, p. 160.

2 See especially Dieteiich, Nekyia, 1893 ; and Heussner, Altchristl. Orpheus-
darstelhmgen, 1893. Cf. also Rohde, Psyche, 1894.

266 EX PLO RATIO EVANGELICA

this they at once aroused the interest of philosophers and
secured the adhesion of the common people. A quotation
from Plato's Republic will set this in a clear light. " The
blessings which Musaeus and his son represent the gods as
bestowing on the just are still more delectable than these ;
for they bring them to the abode of Hades and describe them
as reclining on couches at a banquet of the pious, with garlands
on their heads." " The ungodly, on the other hand, and the
unjust, they plunge into a swamp in Hades, and condemn
them to carry water in a sieve." l With these statements of
the Orphic poets, Plato, in the passage from which I cite,
compares the poems of Homer and Hesiod, which promise to
the just reward not in the future life, but in that which is
present :

As grows the fame of blameless kings, who fear the gods and reign
In righteousness, while plenteous corn springs from the wealthy

plain ;
Their trees with fruit are laden still, their flocks with lambs abound,
While in the sea a harvest rich by fishers' toil is found.

The contrast is very suggestive. The orthodox and typical
poets of Greece dwell, just as do the poets and prophets of the
Jews, on the temporal rewards of a good life ; it is left to
Orpheus and to Muspeus to bring in a new world to redress the
inequalities of the old. And the testimony of Plato is fully
confirmed by all that we know of Greek religious beliefs and
burial customs. The future world of ordinary belief was dull
and gray, joyless and unattractive. But it was no place of
rewards and punishments, of the transports of the blessed, and
the tortures of the condemned. This is, so far as we can judge,
a foreign element which belongs not to ordinary Greek
religion, but specially to Orphism, to the religion of Dionysus
and of Eleusis, to the mysteries and initiations which always
remain foreign to the pure naturalism and gentle scepticism of
the better educated Hellenes.

It seems altogether a mistake to insist, as does Dieterich,"
od the Greek origin of the notions of places of reward and
punishment which wore so widely spread in the countries of

1 Page 868, c. Translation of Davies and Vanghan,
'-' In his Nekyia, already mentioned.

THE DESCENT IXTO HADES 267

Levant during the five centuries which precede tin • Christian
era He is doubtless right in maintaining them to be alto-
gether foreign to all the oldeT literature of the Jews. And
they come to us necessarily in a Greek dress, in words of (ireek
philosophers and poets. But their origin, as I conceive, is by
do means Hellenic. The Greeks themselves derived Orphism
from Thrace, the mysteries of Sabazius from Phrygia, and the
story of Zagreus from Crete. They represent Pythagoras as
journeying into Egypt and the far Mast, and thence bringing
back his theosophic lore. The clearest sight we obtain of the
mystic doctrine of Hades comes to us from Egypt and Babylon.
And that doctrine found its strongest seat not among pure
Greeks, but among the imperfectly Hellenised races of Asia
Miimr and Syria and Southern Italy.

It is clear that the details of the beliefs as to the future
world filtered through from a lower to a higher civilisation.
The tortures supposed to be there inflicted on the condemned
could have been imagined only by peoples to whom the torture
of criminals and prisoners taken in war was an ordinary and
an agreeable subject of meditation. Only barbarians and those
classes of civilised peoples which remained at a barbarous
level could really have welcomed such notions. Thinking and
cultivated men who entertained them would interpret them
not literally but metaphorically, and turn the flames which
savages love to apply to their captured foes into cleansing and
purifying means of moral reform. In the same way the rewards
of virtue, which, as Plato says, Musaeus regards as consisting
in perpetual feasting and drunkenness, would gradually be con-
verted by the more cultivated into celestial repose, and the
enjoyment of converse with the gods. Though in the passage
above cited Plato speaks in contempt of the Orphic writings,
he does not hesitate to borrow from them the materials of those
myths as to the future life which form a noble part of such
works as the Phcedo and the Republic.

In India we find a parallel contrast between the compara-
tively pure theism of the pure-blooded Brahmins, and the crude
beliefs of the low-caste peoples, with all their fables of heaven
and hell, and their veneration for impure and hideous deities.
Indeed in all countries something of the same kind may be

268 EX PL ORA TIO E VA NGELICA

observed. But to the well-being of a nation cruder as well as
more refined religion is necessary. From time to time the
fading beliefs of the educated have to be reinforced by
impulses from below. The wild tree of faith grows most
freely among the unrefined, and it is by successive graftings
upon that tree that the great religions of the world have arisen
and flourished.

It is not, however, in Greece alone that we may trace the
working of these tendencies. We may see it, though less
clearly, in the literature of the Jews ; not in the earlier litera-
ture, as I have already observed, but in the later. The book
of Daniel, dating from the Maccabean age, is perhaps the earliest
work in which any clear differentiation, as regards the unseen
world, is manifest. "Many of them that sleep in the dust
of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to
shame and everlasting contempt. And they that be wise
shall shine as the brightness of the firmament ; and they that
turn many to righteousness as the stars for ever and ever." *
To find a more detailed account of Hades we must turn to the
books of the Apocrypha, written in Greek, and pervaded by
ideas, not precisely Hellenic, but Hellenistic. In particular,
the Book of Enoch, which deals largely in eschatology and the
secrets of the universe, speaks in some. detail of the future of
righteous and wicked : " All goodness and joy and glory are
prepared for them, and are written down for the spirits of those
who have died in righteousness, and manifold good will be given
to you in recompense for your labours, and your lot is abundantly
beyond the lot of the living." And in contrast: "Know ye
that their souls " (the sinners') " will be made to descend into
Sheol, and they will become wretched, and great will be their
tribulation; and into darkness and a net and a burning fire,
where there is grievous condemnation, will your spirits enter ;
and there will be grievous condemnation for the generations of
the world."- In the fourth book of Esdras8 it is said of the
enemies of God, that "they shall decay in confusion and be
consumed with Bhame, and wither in fear, when they see the
glory of the .Must High, in whose sight they sin while they air

1 Darnel xii. 2. - Enoch, edited and translated by Charles, oh. <iii.

i h. vii. 87<

THE DESCENT INTO HADES 269

alive." Much influence 00 later Jewish thoughl was exercised
by a well-known passage of the later Isaiah:1 "They shall go
forth, and look upon the carcases of the men thai have trans-
gressed against me: for their worm shall not die, neither shall
their fire be quenched ; and they shall be an abhorring unto
all flesh." These words in their primary meaning refer to the
materia] bodies of the dead, but in the Hellenistic age they
uviv used of the future world of spirits. And the picture of
which the outline was thus sketched was by degrees filled in
from non-biblical sources. But this filling in went on but
slowly, and was not far advanced at the beginning of the
Christian era

In regard to Hebrew utterances as to the world beyond the
grave, one point is very noteworthy. The doctrine of the im-
mortality of the soul belongs not to the Jews, but to the
Greeks.2 The coming of the Messiah, the resurrection of the
dead, and in particular of the bodies of the dead, the future
glories of Israel: these are the ideas by which Hebrew writers
are dominated. The notion of places of bliss and of torment,
awaiting the soul at its exit from life, though it appears in
later Jewish literature, appears in a subordinate place. And
that this notion is exotic is indicated by the fact, that so far
as it is clothed in physical imagery, the imagery can be traced,
not to the earlier sacred books of the race, but to the literature
of th e Greeks, and in particular to that part of it which was
dominated by the ideas and the doctrines of Orphism. But,
generally speaking, the Jewish writers confine themselves to
vague phrases, and avoid definite descriptions, as is natural to
a people to whom the arts of sculpture and painting were
forbidden.

In the writings of the Xew Testament the world of spirits
and of future rewards and punishments is touched on with
great sobriety and reticence. In the sayings attributed to our
Lord we find such phrases as " My father's house," and " outer
darkness," and the expression taken from Isaiah, as to " the
worm that dieth not, and the fire that is not quenched ; " but
detailed descriptions of the world beyond the grave are wanting.

1 Ch. lxvi. 24.
2 Renan, Histoire da Peupled' Israel, v. p. 65, etc.

27o EX PLO RATIO EVANGELICA

The fullest description to be found iu the Gospels is that con-
tained in the story of Dives and Lazarus, which is found in the
Third Gospel only, and which is, moreover, on the face of it, a
parable. And the Apostles in this matter adhere closely to
the custom of their Master. In their writings there is scarcely
a trace of any attempt to inflame the zeal of their adherents
by pictures of future bliss, or to terrify their opponents by
detailed threats of torment awaiting them in a future exist-
ence.

When, however, we come to the Christian Apocalypses we
tind another range of phenomena. On no subject did the
imagination of the early Christians dwell with more persistency
than on pictures of the world beyond the grave, of the suffer-
ings of the damned, and the bliss of the followers of Christ.
Obviously for these pictures materials were needed. But they
wTere not to be found either in the teaching of the Master or
in the Jewish sacred books. Whence, then, could they be
derived? The obvious source was Orphism. And Dieterich,
by a careful analysis of one of the Christian Apocalypses, that
passing under the name of Peter, has clearly shown that the
details on which it dwells were taken from the current beliefs
and the sacred books of the Orphic mysticism.

The Orphic authorities dwelt with constant emphasis on
the details of the happiness awaiting their adherents beyond
the grave, and particularly on the various kinds of torments
reserved for the wicked and the disobedient in the world of
shades. They spoke of the ever-burning fire, the rivers of
mud and filth, the snakes and monsters which dwelt there, and
the evil spirits who tormented the inhabitants, who were hung
upon trees, roasted alive, or plunged in morasses of blood and
ordure. Virgil, in an Orphic passage, speaks of these tortures
(Acn. vi. 739):

Ergo exercentur poenis, veterumque malorum
Supplicia expendunl ; aliae panduntur inanis
Suspensae ;i<l ventoa ; aliia sub gurgite vasto
[nfectuuo eluitur sceluB, aut exuritur igni.

It cannot be mere coincidence that in the Petrine Apocalyp-c
the same tortures are dwelt on, with close coincidence even in

expression.

THE DESCENT INTO HADl 271

This is a matter on which I cannot dwell as it deserves.
To set forth the evidence in detail would occupy us too Long.
But 1 think that if the whole evidence were duly arrayed, it
would h-avc little refuge for doubt in any mind. The heaven
and the hell of early Christian writers ami of the Middle
Ages owe their origin neither to the teaching of Christ nor to
that of his Apostles. Nor are they derived either from the
established Jewish or the established Hellenic religion; hut
Far as they have a source in either, that source was itself
derived from the underground mystic beliefs and speculations
of the more primitive and probably non-Hellenic peoples of
Asia Minor and Hellas, and even the races of Syria and
Babylon. The Greeks, so far as influenced by those beliefs,
had worked them into artistic form in the poems of Pindar
and the paintings of Polygnotus. The Jews, so far as in-
fluenced by those beliefs, had formed vague conceptions of a
life in the presence of God, and of a fire in which the wicked
were consumed for ever. But the early Christians went much
further, and imported from Orphism into Christianity notions
of the future world at once of a more definite and a less refined
character.

There are two motives readily discernible which would
induce the early Christians to give form to their doctrine of
the descent of their Founder into the world of shades. In the
first place, since Jesus was supposed to have been buried on the
Friday and to have risen on the Sunday, the question would
naturally be asked where his spirit remained in the inter-
mediate period ; and the answer which would naturally be given
was that it was in the world of shades, in Hades. "We have
already seen that some of the fathers did not seek to attach to
the doctrine a fuller meaning than this. And, in the second
place, speculation would naturally arise in the Church as to the
state of departed worthies of the Old Testament. "Would they,
merely because born too early, be deprived of the benefits of
the death of Christ ? This could scarcely be supposed ; and
thus it was natural that it should be maintained that as Jesus
had preached to men on earth, so on the day succeeding the
crucifixion he preached to those who had left the world
before his birth.

EXP LO RATIO EVANGEUCA

As disembodied spirits might wait for a body wherein they
could come to life on the earth, so these desires and tendencies
would await a mythical and doctrinal body wherein they could
find expression in the nascent Church. Whence should such
a body come ? It could not come from a use of Old Testament
narrative and theology, since none of the Jewish worthies
had been to the land of shades and returned. Enoch had been
taken by God ; Elijah had been carried up alive to heaven,
but neither had passed through Sheol on the way. But,
though the idea of a visit to Hades, and a return thence, was
foreign to the classical literature of the Jews, it had a place in
the religious writings and speculations of many other peoples.
In Baby Ionic legend, the goddess Ishtar went clown into the
world of spirits, there for a while to abide and thence with
difficulty to return. Buddha went, to complete his mission, to
Hell, to save by preaching those who had died in sin ; and
not dissimilar tales are told in tho primitive lore of more
barbarous peoples. On these, however, we need not dwell,
since there seems no reason to believe that such tales would
be known by or influence the members of the early Christian
Churches of Greater Greece and Italy. But there were current
in those regions stories of heroes, well known wherever Greek
was spoken, who had made the voyage to Hades. And these
stories belong to the mystic mythology of the Orphists in a
peculiar manner, whencesoever they may originally have come.
It was told how Hercules descended into the abode of Hades, ami
dragged away the watch-dog Cerberus. Odysseus, by the advice
of Circe, had voyaged to the mouth of the world of the dead, and
.consulted the seer Teiresias as to future things. But the passage
.of the Odyssey which describes this visit is supposed to have
been largely adulterated by Orphic influence ; Onomacritus, the
Orphic sage, having had a share in the collection and editing
.of the Homeric poems at the Court of Pisistratus. We hear
.of a journey to Hades by Pythagoras, in which lie saw the
soul of Hesiod bound to a pillar, and that of Homer hung in a
tree, as a punishment for speaking unworthily of the gods.
And Persephone, the august goddess of Eleusis, had herself
been carried by violence to the world of shades, and thence
been restored for a time to her mother on earth. Dionysus

THE DESCENT INTO HADES 273

also went to Hades to bring back thence bis mother
Semele.1

But of all the visits to Hades recorded in < Orphic mythology
by far the most important was that of Orpheus himself. The
lovely and pathetic story told by the poets on the .subject is
familiar to all ; how he could not live without his lost Eurydice,
and so, with a love stronger than death, followed her to the
realm of Hades; how his lyre won a way for him, and so
softened the heart of the stern rulers of the dead that Eurydice
was allowed to follow her husband on the road to the world
above on condition that he did not look at her; and how at
List he violated in his longing the stern condition, and Eury-
dice was reft from him once more and for ever. Such was
the tale of the poets ; but it would seem that the tales told of
the descensus of Orpheus in the Orphic books and in the
mysteries were different and more serious by far.

The same ideas found expression in Christian doctrine in
the quasi-historical doctrine of the Descent of our Lord into
Hades. The language in which the idea clothed itself was
borrowed from Orphism. Christ succeeeded and superseded
the great prophet of Hellenistic mysticism. In this case also
Pagan beliefs were ennobled and glorified by being baptized
into the name of Christ. And with the main doctrine came a
train of consequences. As the Christian descensus ad vnferos
took the place of the Orphic Kardftaais eh "AiSov, so the
Apocalyptic pictures of heaven and hell, of the triumph of
Christ, and the liberation of imprisoned souls, were merely
enlarged and glorified copies of the supernatural landscape of
the Orphic eschatology. In the Gospel of Nicodemus, which
contains a long description of the Descent of Christ and his
victory over death and hell, we find a long colloquy between
Hades and Satan. The Greek lord of the world of shades and
the arch-enemy of Jewish theology are alike introduced as
persons in the drama of the triumph of Christianity. The
power to be broken was the power of Satan, but the scene of
the conflict was that which had been developed by Hellenistic
speculation.

Unfortunately the adoption into Christianity was in this

1 Diodoru.s. iv. 25.
18

274 EXPLO RATIO EVANGEL1CA

case late, and the transformation incomplete. Greek good
taste had rejected centuries before the baser descriptions of
bliss and torment which Orphism owed to its lowly birth and
obscure course. Xeo-Platonism and Eleusis had allegorised
them into spirituality. The Jews had refused them as un-
worthy. There is no taint of them in the writings of the
Xew Testament. But into the subterranean Christianity of
the Roman Empire they made way but too readily. Every
one knows how deeply they stained the thought as well as the
art of the Middle Ages. Modern religion rejects the materialist
distortions, while preserving the spiritual substance. And in
doing so it loses nothing. To any thinking man the simple
pli rases of the Gospels as to the fire which cannot be quenched,
and the worm which dies not, are far more terrible in their
intensity of meaning than the barbarous imagery raised to
sublimity in Dante, which was a frequent subject of ridicule
even in the ages of faith, and is now set aside by the common
feeling of Christians.

Our investigation of the descensus ad inferos has thus led
us into a study of a particular religious development during a
few centuries. The result has been the discovery of a great
probability that the Christian doctrine of the Descent into
Hades, together with the imagery in which the future world
was presented to the early Christian imagination, was derived
neither from a Christian nor from a Jewish, nor even a
Hellenic source, but from the mystic lore of Dionysus and
Orpheus. And however much the doctrine was Christianised,
it never wholly shook off, especially among the unlearned, a
certain barbarism which belongs to its origin.

We shall see later that direct borrowing from Greek mystic
lore by Christian belief was very rare ; in fact the descensus
stands almost alone as an example in early times: of influence
and parallelism extending from the Greek Mysteries to
Christianity we can find abundant traces.

CHAPTER XXII

THE SECOND ADVENT

NEXT to the embodiment of the ideas of early Christianity
in ideal histories of Lhe Founder, we have to speak of their
incorporation in prophecy : prophecy as to the end of the
world, the second coming of the Messiah, and the last great
judgment.

Of all the phenomena of the early Church, none was more
intensely Jewish than were these prophecies. Prophecy be-
longed especially to the Jews. They alone among ancient
peoples succeeded often in merging the present in the future.
Among the Greeks the prophet was despised and looked upon
as a charlatan. Among the Jews he frequently stood at the
head of the whole religious life of the nation. The Greeks
lived for the ideal. But among the more materialistic Hebrews
the ideal naturally developed itself as that which should
hereafter take place in the world, under conditions of space
and time.

It was because the Jews felt with greater intensity than
any other race that the course of events in this world of ours
is under the direct and undeviating direction of God, that they
passed thus naturally from that which ought to be to that
which shall be. According to some of their prophets, such as
Ezekiel, the righteous man must be rewarded, and the wicked
man punished during the present life. Thus the throne of a
king who served God must necessarily be abiding and prosperous
because it was established in righteousness. So it was but a
step to pass from a conviction of the wickedness of Babylon to

276 EXPLORATIO EVANGELICA

a prophecy of the fall of Babylon. And so, however Israel
was persecuted and oppressed, yet if he remained in the ways
of the Lord, his restoration to prosperity and honour was
certain.

But when in the course of time the bitter experience of life
gradually wore down the naive belief that the good are always
prosperous, two new elements became prominent in the popular
Jewish belief as to the future : first, that a purposeful inter-
vention from above, the appearance of a Messiah, was necessary
to restore the perverted ways of the world ; and, second, that
justice could not be preserved unless the virtuous Israelites
who had been laid in the grave in sadder ages rose again in
the days of the Messiah to share his kingdom, and to receive
the reward of the good deeds done in the flesh.

The strong reaction of the national conscience in the days
of the Maccabees against Greek ways of thought and Greek
dominion had indelibly stamped upon the Jewish heart the
idea of a great coming deliverer who should not merely save
Israel from his enemies but exalt him above all the peoples of
the earth. The expectations formed of the Messiah varied from
time to time and from writer to writer. Some of the Jews thought
only of a selfish triumph for their race, but the nobler minds
hoped that by their victory all the nations of the world would
be benefited, and brought near to the God of Israel ; that salva-
tion should spread outwards from the renovated Jerusalem,
until all peoples had a share in its blessedness.

When the followers of Jesus had entirely accepted their
Master as the promised Messiah, it might seem that they
would be driven to substitute the idea of the suffering and
redeeming servant of God for that of the triumphant ruler in
their conception of the promised Messiah. But cherished
national ideals do not easily die. And even after the death
upon the cross had painted in indelible colours the outlines of
the Christian Messiah, the early disciples could not entirely
give up aspirations which had been woven into the fabric of
the national character, but still went back to the conviction
that at some time, sooner or later, the suffering Christ would
lay aside his meekness and gentleness and appeal as ;i
mighty ruler and a stern judge, trampling upon Gentile and

THE SECOND API ENT 277

hostile Jew and placing his followers upon the throne of
1 11 ►war.

And this is exactly the conviction mirrored in the
eschatological discourses of the Synoptists. In them there is
a sentiment almost entirely Jewish, the Gentile being regarded
as a natural foe. And the drama culminates in the appear-
ance of the Lord in the clouds of heaven and the gathering
together of the elect. Of a moral judgment, the separation
of the evil and the good, there is no mention in these
eschatological speeches.

We have abundant indications in the Gospel narratives
that the death of Jesus came upon the disciples as a profound
surprise, and an utter disappointment. In time the Church
was to learn that that death was the source of her own life;
that Christ in heaven was nearer and dearer than Christ on
earth. But before this great truth had been realised, there
was an intermediate time of transition, when the disciples
arded their Master's absence from them as brief, and his
death as a mere episode in the history of his work upon earth.
At the beginning of the Acts the disciples are represented as
asking eagerly of their risen Lord, " Wilt thou at this time
restore again the kingdom to Israel ? " Though we cannot
regard the incident as historical, yet doubtless this was the
mental attitude of the early disciples, and wre catch the note of
hope deferred in the reply chronicled, " It is not for you to
know the times or the seasons, which the Father hath put in
his own power."

Certainly no belief of Christianity rilled so large a share
in the horizon of the early Christians as that in the Second
Advent. One may fairly say that without it Christianity
would have taken quite another character, if, indeed, it had
persisted at all. We must think of many early disciples as
living in constant expectation of the trumpet-call which
should proclaim the final resurrection, as looking upon all
the arrangements of civil life as of so temporary a character
as to be scarcely worth a thought. It is obvious how such
a belief would act in making Christians steadfast under
persecution, contemptuous of civil government, and regard-
less of worldly wealth and all considerations of prudence.

278 EXPLORATIO EVANGELIC A

They did not at first even care to commit to writing the
teaching of their Founder, fully expecting that the Second
Advent would take place before the generation of eye-
witnesses died out. And few of them would dream of
consciously making arrangements for the continuation of
the organisation and discipline of the Church in future
generations.

It was only after the terrible series of events which ended
in the total destruction of Jerusalem that the second coming
of the Messiah was gradually detached from the Jewish
expectation of a visible reign of the saints on the earth, and more
and more closely connected with a looking for a great judg-
ment of souls and a realm where the blessed dwelt in heaven.
This hope was not, however, of Jewish origin, but came from
elsewhere. We have sufficiently spoken of it in the last
chapter. It preceded the triumph of the great Christian idea
of an exalted Saviour, which is indeed embodied in the
writings of St. Paul, but did not filter down to the level of
ordinary Christians until a much later period.

It is a very difficult, probably an insoluble problem, to
determine what ground a belief in a Second Advent had in
the sayings of the Founder. If we turn to the Synoptic
Gospels we shall find that a considerable part of them is devoted
to prophecies by Jesus of his second coming. Other doctrines
are based on detached texts, this on whole chapters, and on
great sections of that Common Tradition which is perhaps the
most primitive part of the Gospels. If beliefs were true and
important in proportion to the amount of authority to be
found for them in the Gospel narratives, no part of the creed of
Christendom would stand more firmly than this. But Apocalypses
never bear the name of their real authors; they are always put
in the mouth of some prophet or authority. And the repre-
sentatives of ordinary orthodoxy who usually uphold the perfect
trustworthiness of our Evangelists are almost obliged in this
case to suppose considerable mixture in their traditions or
confusion in their minds. The Evangelists, it is said, confused
the Second Advent with the fall of Jerusalem and other
coming calamities. And I imagine that no candid critic can
examine the 13th chapter of the Gospel of Mark, with the

THE SECOND ADVENT

parallel passages in the other Gospels, withoul Beeing strong
evidence thai they are nol altogether trustworthy. We find
in them references to the preaching of the Gospel among
the Gentiles; to persecutions of the Christians ; to Jerusalem
being compassed with armies: all of which phrases point to
a time considerably after the Crucifixion. "We cannot say
whether these discourses may have had some basis in the
word-; of the Master. But in any case those words must be
distorted and interpolated.

Harnack well observes,1 "In the matter of eschatology no
one can say what sayings come from Christ, and what from
the disciples." That the tradition here was very uncertain,
because influenced by the Jewish Apocalyptic, is shown by the
one fact that Fapias (in Iren. v. 33) quotes as words of the
Lord, which had been handed down by the disciples, a group
of sayings which we find in the Apocalypse of Baruch, about the
amazing I'ruitfulness of the earth during the time of the Messianic
kingdom. So M. ReVille observes with justice that the prophecies
of the last things are not in the manner of Jesus. " N'est-il pas
surprenant que les enseignements de Jesus, meme quand il
^nonce des idees qui ne sont pas precisement nouvelles, ont
toujours un cachet original, individuel, frappe nettement a sa
marque personnel, et qu'ici, au contraire, c'est ce qu'il y a de
plus banal dans les apocalypses qui nous est presente comme
sa revelation supreme ? " 2

There is no doubt that at the time of the siege of Jerusalem
the Christians fled from the city, and it is generally supposed
that their flight, the motive for which was a command of their
Master, was made in consequence of the existence among them
of prophecies, such as that of Luke xxi. 20, " "When ye see
Jerusalem compassed with armies, then know that the desola-
tion thereof is nigh." It appears, however, more probable that
Eusebius is right in his statement that the flight was in
consequence of a direct revelation to the Christians at the
time ; 3 and, if so, that the words of the Evangelist were written
after, and took their colour from, the event.

1 Dogmengeaehiehte, 3rd edition, i. C5, 07 : Trans, i. 101.
- Jesus de Nazareth, ii. 321.

a Eusebius writes (If. E. iii. 5), Kara, nva xpve/J-^" Toh avrodi 5okihois 5l'
aTroKaXv-J/ews (KOodevTa. Cf. Renan, L' Antichrist, p. 296.

2So EXPLORATIO EVANGELIC A

Passing from the escliatological discourses, let us turn to
other parts of the Synoptic Gospels, which have a stronger
imprint of authenticity.

There are certain passages in the Common Tradition in
which Jesus is described as speaking of a coming of the Son
of Man, in the glory of his Father, and surrounded by the holy
angels, that he may judge the world in righteousness.1 And
in a magnificent discourse peculiar to Matthew (xxv. 31-46)
the details of this judgment are dwelt on in words of wonderful
power and solemnity. These passages are intertwined with
much that is most characteristic of the teaching of Jesus. In
particular in the discourse in Matthew one may fairly say that
alike the Jewish doctrine of a supernatural revelation of the
Messiah as judge and deliverer, and the Greek Hellenistic
doctrine of an inevitable moral judgment of souls, receive
baptism into Christ, and are raised to a higher level for ever.
The sublime verdict, " Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one
of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me,"
is of the very essence of the Christian religion, and full of the
spirit of the Founder of it.

At the same time, if we regard these passages, in the form
in which they have reached us, as belonging wholly to Jesus,
we fall into difficulties various and serious. A close examina-
tion of the context of the parable of the sheep and the goats is
instructive. The vision of the judgment and the separation
as of sheep and goats comes in a group with other sublime
parables of kindred type, such as that of the wise and foolish
virgins and that of the talents. It has been already suggested 2
that it is a materialist view of these parables to suppose them
to refer to a catastrophic coming of the Messiali ; and that it
is far more suitable to regard them as having reference to the
quiet spread of the Christian Society, or even to the coming of
the Son of Man in the lives and experiences of individuals.
It is by no means improbable that in its original form the
parable of the Great Judgment also may be quite detached
from the promise of a visible judgment of mankind. In the
text, it is true, the moral is brought in, " Watch, therefore, for
ye know neither tlie day nor the hour wherein the Son of Man
1 Matt. xvi. 27 ; Mark mi. '■'•* : Luke i\. 26. Ch. XVII.

THE SECOND AD TEXT 281

cometh." Yet the coming of the Son of Man thus spoken of
might not mean a future advent, but the dawning of the
kingdom of God on the hearers whether socially or individually.
This is most clearly indicated by that remarkable passage in

Luke (xvii. 20), where Jesus sets himself to correct the fancy
of the Pharisees that the kingdom of God would immediately
appear, " The kingdom of God cometh not with observation:
neither shall they say, Lo here! or, Lo there! for behold the
kingdom of God is within you."1 That is a most luminous
Baying, and one which could not have been invented by any
disciple ; and it throws a strong light on many other passages.
It suggests that the discourse in Matthew above cited is really
of the nature of a parable, which changed its character in
passing through the minds of Jewish auditors. Many other
passages in the Gospels which bear reference to a future
judgment may thus have been drawn out of their proper orbit
by the force of the prevailing beliefs as to a great day of
judgment.

We have already, in speaking of the parables of the
kingdom, found similar phenomena. And if now we turn
back to the long eschatological discourses we shall see indica-
tions in them also of a confusion between the Second Advent
and the coming of the kingdom of God in the heart. The
phrase, "The one shall be taken and the other left," admirably
applies to the seemingly capricious action of the divine
influence on individuals, but it is singularly inappropriate in
speaking of an outward manifestation, which must equally
affect all. A still clearer proof of misunderstanding is found
in a comparison of Matt. xvi. 28 with Mark ix. 1 and Luke ix.
2 7.-' Mark represents Jesus as saying that some of those who
stand by "shall in no wise taste of death, till they see the
kingdom of God come with power." Luke omits the words
"' with power." But Matthew alters the phrase into "shall in
no wise, taste of death, till they see the Son of Man coming
in his kingdom." Evidently Matthew or his source, at the
moment of writing, thought of the kingdom of God and the

1 The revisers of the English Bible adhere to this translation, though in the
margin they give the alternative rendering " in the midst of you."

2 This comparison is due to M. R£ville, J&us de Nazareth, ii. 323.

EX PLO RATIO EVANGELICA

Second Advent as synonyms. But, as we know, this was far
from being the attitude of mind of the Master. The version
of Luke seems to be clearly the most trustworthy ; and the
saying of the Master may only mean that he anticipated a
wide spread of the Christian society even in the lifetime of
the Apostles.

In this matter, as in many others, the Fourth Gospel, in
spite of its later date and its strong personal tinge, seems to
bring us nearer to the higher Christian teaching than do the
Synoptists. In this Gospel the Second Advent is not dwelt
on, and is indeed scarcely mentioned.1 But there are passages
in it which seem expressly designed to counteract the more
material and thaumaturgic view of that advent and the final
judgment, which was no doubt fast spreading, and to develop
the higher meaning which should be attached to it.

In the farewell discourse of John xiv., Jesus speaks with
great impressiveness of his future reunion with his disciples.
The separation is not to be long, and to end in a more perfect
union than before. That union seems in some places to be
spoken of as taking place in the future life. " I will come
again and receive you unto myself, that where I am there ye
may be also." But in other places it seems to be spoken of
as taking place on earth. " I will not leave you comfortless ;
I will come to you. Yet a little while, and the world seeth
me no more ; but ye see me ; because I live, ye shall live
also." The second coming here spoken of is no such visible
appearance in the clouds as the Synoptists, and even St. Paul,
confidently expected, but a spiritual presence in the hearts of
the disciples. It is marvellous how this Evangelist rises by a
wonderful inspiration above the level of his contemporaries;
how almost everything that he touches loses its material
qualities, and becomes purely spiritual. He, like St. Paul,
lived in Christ, but unlike St. Paul he had no illusions as to
an approaching catastrophe, which was to overwhelm the
heathen world and usher in the reign of the saints. He sounds
even in regard to the last judgment a similar note:'"' "I came

1 Cf. xxi. 22, "If I will lh.it tie tarry till I conic, what is that to thee?"
This phrase belongs to an appendix, not to tho body of the Gospel, which ends
witli i:h. xx " x ii. 47.

THE SECOND ADVENT 2X3

not to judge the world, but to save the world Be that

rejecteth nif. and lvceivctli nut my words, hath one thai
judgeth him: the word that I have spoken, the same shall
judge him in the last 'lav.'* The meaning of this passage,
clear enough at firsl sight, becomes still clearer if we compare
another passage in the Gospel,1 "Do not think that I will
accuse you to the Father : there is one that accuseth you, even
Moses, in whom ye trust. For had ye believed Moses, ye
would have believed me."

How much of this teaching is from Jesus himself, and how
much was imparted from above to the writer of the Gospel, we
know not, and we never shall know. But its meaning is clear.
It is the teaching of Jesus which judges ipso facto those wdio
hear and reject it or fail to appreciate it. It is the life of
Jesus and of his successors in the Church which condemns
bhose who having seen the better follow the worse. A judgment
more terrible than that of any personal judge, since it is,
humanly speaking, not to be escaped, falls upon every conscious
sin and every avoidable declension from the highest path.
Christ will judge the Christian, as Moses will judge the Jew,
and we may add, as Buddha will judge the Buddhist, by the
mere power of the idea working through law, and crushing that
which opposes itself to the higher life. So " that servant which
knew his lord's will and prepared not himself, neither did
according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes. But
he that knew not, and did commit things worthy of stripes,
shall be beaten with few stripes."

Thus there appears to me to be grave doubt whether we
are justified in saying that Jesus foretold his own second
coming for judgment. But it must be confessed that the
majority of recent critics regard it as almost indisputable that
he did give utterance to such predictions. Hausrath observes
that in accepting the claim to Messiahship, Jesus must have
accepted the claim to appear in judgment. M. -lean Reville
asks whence, if not from their Master, the disciples could have
gained their belief in a near second coming. I cannot regard
these views as established. If established, they would prove
in the mind of Jesus such a confusion of thought as we find

1 v. 45.

284 EXPLORA TIO E VANGELICA

in the disciples; but the blame would rest in the imperfect
foreknowledge, not in the character or will of the Founder of
Christianity.

If we pass from the prophecies of the Synoptic Gospels,
the only detailed New Testament prophecy is that contained in
the Book of Revelation. We have there what professes to be
a detailed account of the events which shall come to pass in
the world before the Second Advent. These events must be
supposed limited to a brief period, since it was the universal
opinion of the early Church that the Second Advent was nigh
at hand ; and the words with which the seer concludes, " Behold
I come quickly," show that he shared the general opinion.
There is perhaps no book of the Bible which has been more
successfully dealt with by criticism than the Revelation. The
author of it was certainly a Jew. Certain parts of it appear
to have been written by a Jew who was not a convert to
Christianity, especially the passage (ch. xii.) which seems to
speak of the birth of the Messiah as future. Other passages,
however, are Judseo-Christian, and the whole has been redacted
by a Christian writer. The date and purpose of the book has
been clearly made out. It was written after the death of
Nero, when a belief had risen and spread far and wide that
that death had not really taken place, and when the return of
the monster, " the beast," was expected by both Jews and
Christians. Nero was to revive as Antichrist, and for a time
to be successful, until his triumph led to the return of the
Messiah and the gathering together of the elect of God.

Nero never reappeared, and if the world were governed by
logic, the Apocalypse would soon have been set aside as
discredited by the progress of events. But besides the mere
unveiling of the future which it was the purpose of the author
to accomplish, he had in him something of the true seer,
the man who sees through the outward and temporary into
tin' inward and eternal. And this element lias saved his
work from perishing.

It was because he was a true seer thai the description of
heaven which lay to him in the future bore translation from the
future tense into the tense of the ideal; so that the city of gold
and the tree of life have becon ver 3ince part of the regular

THE SECOND ADVENT 285

imagery of the Christian imagination, and a vision of the
multitude thai no man can number has comforted and sustained
thousands both in life and death. The vision also of a great
white throne and of a final judgment of the good and the evil,
which is in the Apocalypse itself only a brief episode, has
become detached front its fanciful surroundings and remains a
lamp of conduct and a beacon of hope.

We have seen how, in many cases, the writer of the Fourth
Gospel rebukes the materialism of the early Christians. He
rebukes also the attempts made by writers like the author of
the Apocalypse, to map out the future. " Even now have
arisen many antichrists." "This is the antichrist, even he that
denieth the Father and the Son " ! Here, as always, it is to
experience that the Fourth Evangelist turns, to the higher
experience of the inner life, away from things of sense. He
transfers, as did his Master, the great battles between good and
evil from the field of history to that of psychology. No two
points of view, no two habits of thought, could be more utterly
opposed than that of the Fourth i^vangelist and that of the
writer of the Apocalypse.

We must briefly sum up what wre have said in regard to
New Testament prophecy. At the time when it was written
there were two realms of the ideal. The Greeks, under the
influence of the Platonic philosophy, had discovered a higher
and spiritual world where dwelt the forms or ideas after which
the present world was created. And under the influence of the
nations of the East, as concentrated in the mysteries, they had
brought in a new world beyond the grave to right the wrongs
and the iniquities of that which lies about us. The Jews
expected a great national deliverer and the setting right of all
wrongs as an event of the future to take place on the visible
earth.- In early Christianity we see the Jewish point of view
gradually give way to the Hellenic. According to the Synoptic
Gospels the Founder of Christianity spoke of a near judgment
and reign of the saints. That he really held that belief cannot

1 1 Ep. John ii. 22. The First Epistle of John, if not by the writer of the
Fourth Gospel, is by a close imitator of his.

- In the book of Enoch the visible world is spoken of as not worthy to be
the scene of the new realm, of the heavenly Jerusalem : but here we may
probably see Greek influence.

EX PL OR A TIO E VA XGELICA

be proved ; but it is quite clear that it was held by the early
Christians. In the writings of St. Paul and in the Fourth
Gospel we see this view in course of transformation. Paul
looks for the coming of his Master ; but he is to come, not to
reign on the earth, but to take his saints to dwell with him in
glory. The Fourth Evangelist reports Jesus as saying that
he goes to prepare for his followers a place, and will come
again to take them to dwell with him. Both of these great
thinkers, while unable entirely to abandon the Jewish point of
view, merge it in the belief of a transcendent spiritual existence.
To this matter we return in Chapter XXXIV.

There have been periods in the history of Christianity
which have witnessed a recrudescence of the expectation of the
end of the world and the second coming of Christ. About
the year a.d. 1000 for example the belief was almost universal
that the end of the world was at hand. Yet, speaking generally,
we may fairly say that the history of the doctrine has been the
story of a gradual decay, until in our days belief in a literal
Second Advent has passed into the background. Ordinary
good Christians do not openly reject the doctrine, but it has no
great influence on their conduct, nor do they feel much interest
in it. It is in the condition of a mere survival, which performs
no function, and which would scarcely be missed if it were
removed from the scheme of Christian belief. It is most
powerful among obscure sects and eccentric individuals.

Thus it has happened in this case, as in many others, that
while certain of the doctrines of the early Church have become
atrophied, and survive only in creeds and confessions, not in
life and thought, yet they have been closely connected with
beliefs of far greater vitality than their own. The bodily
(•(iming of Christ in the clouds has become to us a fanciful
notion. And the vision of a great final judgment, which tin-
sublime language of some of the parables of Jesus lias made
familiar to our minds, and the genius of Christian art has made
luminous to our imaginations, now seems to us to be an image
only. Torn out of the context of the Second Advent it can he
but an image, since a formal scene of judgment demands a
place and a time, which only the occasion (if the Second Advent
could furnish. lint although the great white throne, and the

THE SECOND ADVENT 287

division as of the Bheep from the goats, seem now but the
elements of a Btately vision, yet the doctrine of a final retribu-
tion has oot passed, and cannot pass, from the hearts of men.
Christian prophecy has been merged in the doctrine of the
future Ufa

Of the future life 1 shall treat in a future chapter.
Before, however, leaving this subject 1 must point out that
there was in the Jewish Messianic belief an element which
Christianity has not fully absorbed, but which the present age
appreciates very highly. The persistent belief of the Jews in
a coming reign of righteousness on earth, though it had in it
much of materialism, also contained the germs of progress. The
Jews were almost the only ancient nation which thus believed
in the future of the world. Educated Greeks and Bomans
placed the great time of their nations in the past, and saw in the
present little but degeneracy, and in the future not much of
hope. But the stubborn healthiness of the Jews demanded a
retribution and a reign of saints on this visible earth. As
the hope of a near Second Advent failed in the Christian
Church, the hope of a temporal restoration of things failed also ;
and Christians felt more and more that their kingdom was not
of this world.

The impress thus stamped on Christianity has marked it
throughout, with occasional noteworthy exceptions. But in
comparatively recent times there has been a reaction against
this excess. The other-worldliness of Christianity has been seen
to lead to abuses. The French devolution, and the aspirations
and tendencies which have arisen out of it, have reverted to the
idea of an ideal commonwealth on earth, a reign of justice and
of happiness, in which the inequalities of the world shall be
abolished or reduced, and peace, justice, and goodwill reign
supreme. And now Christianity, which has seldom failed to
absorb, and to baptize into Christ, every rising enthusiasm, has
seized upon this also. We find on all sides, at least in
Protestant countries, churches and societies by no means
dominated by the spirit of other-worldliness ; but most anxious
to bring the spirit of the Master to bear on the existing
fabric of society. They do not expect a Messiah to appear in
the clouds ; but they do hope and believe that the teaching

EX PLO RATIO EVANGEL1CA

of Jesus which appears in the Synoptic Gospels contains
remedies for all the diseases of our hectic civilisation, and
the promise of a world full of brotherly love and social
justice.

No one can wish anything but success to so noble an
enthusiasm, and hopes so worthy. No doubt these societies
will not attain all that they hope, but they may attain much.
Certainly they have already done much to prevent the gap
which on the Continent exists between Christianity and pro-
gress from growing wider in this country. But they may
fail if they overvalue that which is without compared with that
which is within, or if they assume that all evolution is progress.
It is to be hoped that it may be possible, as in the early
Church, to adopt the ideas of extra- Christian enthusiasm
without accepting the materialism and immorality which often
20 with them.

CHAPTER XXIII

Til!'. ( BISIS OF CHRISTIANITY

PERHAPS no period in the history of the world offers such
difficulties to sober and methodic history as the first century of
our era. Not to speak of Jesus himself, his early followers
exhibit phenomena of the most surprising and unprecedented
character. An unknown Jew endowed with little literary skill
produces the Gospel of Matthew, another writer whose identity
is uncertain the Gospel of Luke, which the fine taste of Renan
declares to be the most beautiful book in the world. Another
unknown writer produces the Fourth Gospel, one of the most
marvellous religious and spiritual compositions imaginable.
The disciples who at the time of the Crucifixion were dispersed,
hiding, utterly discomfited, are found within a very brief space
of time bold, confident, ready and determined to conquer
Judaea and to carry out their Master's work. All this requires
the operation of forces about which history knows very little.
Where history looks for evolution, it finds a new and astound-
ing departure. If it is determined to set aside the hypothesis
of divine inspiration, it is altogether overmatched by the facts.
In past chapters I have tried at least to indicate the view
which colourless history would take of the life and the teach-
ings of Jesus. Such, we think, would have been the account
given of him by some interested Pagan historian, writing at
the time. He would have appeared in history as Jesus of
Nazareth, a reformer mighty in word, with an unrivalled genius
for religion, and mighty in deed by a personal fascination
which healed disease and gave mental and moral tone to the

19

2QO EX PL ORA TIO E VA NGELICA

insane, a martyr slain by Jewish fanaticism, and bitterly be-
wailed by many devoted followers, who had learned to recognise
in him the promised Jewish Messiah.

Yet there are very few professed Christians who can now,
after nineteen centuries, be content thus to describe the
Founder of Christianity. The reason is that by far the greater
part of the life of Jesus Christ on earth began with his death.
The history of the exalted Christ is separated only by a few
days from the life of the earthly Jesus. What would, accord-
ing to the analogies of history, be the result of the Crucifixion ?
The answer is easy. The small baud of the Apostles and their
adherents would have fled away to Galilee. There, in the light
of memory, they might have lived on for a while as a sect or a
society. For a time they would have raised the tone of the
country round ; in the end they would probably have become
an obscure sect of Judaism, or been merged in the community
of the Essenes.

But what really did take place ? This is a question which
we cannot answer with confidence or in detail. The state-
ments of the Pauline Epistles we can accept with confidence,
though of course they are not free from personal bias. But
the last chapters of the Gospels and the earlier chapters of the
Acts are very unsatisfactory as historical records, as has been
proved again and again by criticism. But however defective
our evidence as to the history of the few years which follows!
the Crucifixion, some facts are clear. If the disciples for a brief
period fled to Galilee, they soon returned to Jerusalem,1 the
the very place where their Master had been slain, and where
they had daily to meet his murderers. And instead of dwelling
timorously in the shade, they were soon found openly pro-
claiming that their Master was still with them in the spirit,
and that only by union witli his spirit could the world be
saved. In his name they healed diseases and cast out demons ;
in his name they offered forgiveness of sins and the favour of
God to all who would join them. And in his name they
cheerfully braved persecution and even martyrdom.

An'l eveu (liis is not the must surprising of the phenomena.

1 On this point there is a curious conflict of testimony in the Evangelists ;
Matthew takes the Apostles to Galilee, Luke retains them in Jerusalem.

THE CRISIS < >/■ CHRIS TIA NITY 291

The most wonderful facl is Lhat for some time after the death
of Jesus the teaching in the society which he founded went on
ilevrlujwng, becoming mme universal and better adapted for
general acceptance. Of course, in a sense, no teaching could
l»e more sublime or more profound than the paradoxes of the
Sermon oil the Mount, or the Parables of the Kingdom. And
yet it does QOt appear that these would by themselves have
conquered and renovated the world. The doctrines which
conquered the world were those set forth by the authors of the
Fourth Gospel and the Pauline Epistles. We can clearly see
that these great theologians of the nascent Church did a vast
deal to develop the teaching current in the society, as well as
to put it in a new form. It was theirs to adapt to the Hellen-
istic world the pure spiritual teaching of Jesus. And they
accomplished their task by taking up into Christianity the
main religious ideas of the Hellenistic world; baptizing them,
so to speak, in the name of the Master, and sending them
forth on a fresh plane of influence among men.

What was the source of the force which enabled them to
accomplish this mighty achievement ? In part, no doubt, it
was the personal fascination of Jesus himself: a power which
had dwelt in him, and which mastered the hearts and the
brains of those who had contact with him. Yet, however
great the personal fascination of the Founder may have been,
that will not in itself account for the facts of the rise of
Christianity. There have been many leaders in the history of
the world for whom their disciples were ready to face a thousand
deaths. But the followers of Jesus forsook him and fled at
the first touch of serious persecution. The spell which bound
them to their Master was not of a kind to resist a severe
strain. Unless our Gospels are quite worthless as historic
documents, they must be taken to prove that the personality
of Jesus did not, while he was alive, overpower his friends and
disarm his enemies. It is astonishing how persistent was the
hatred of the Pharisees, how lukewarm the support of the dis-
ciples, how all the Apostles misunderstood and undervalued
their Master, and how one of them sold him to death. Then
again the most effective of the early preachers of Christianity
had probably never seen Jesus. It is clear that there were

292 EXPLORATIO EVANGELICA

other forces at work in the rapid spread of the Christian faith,
besides the remembered words and deeds and personal charm of
Jesus.

It was immediately after the Crucifixion that the crisis
took place ; that the history of Christianity took a sharp turn
aud moved in a new direction. Even the prominent actors of
the scene are, with the one exception of Peter, changed. A
very important personage in the Church at Jerusalem is James,
the brother of Jesus. According to the Gospels the brothers
of Jesus were, down to the Crucifixion, bitterly opposed to him,
incredulous as to his mission, disposed even to doubt his sanity.
But soon afterwards they are the most prominent among the
Christians. Dr. Lightfoot 1 recalls Paul's statement that James
was among the first witnesses of the Besurrection, and thinks
it likely that the appearance of the crucified one to James
was the cause or occasion of a complete change in his heart
and life.

The Church at Jerusalem, under the leadership of the
brothers of Jesus and of the Apostles, soon began to increase
rapidly in numbers. But its fitting for a great career in the
world came not from any mere growth in numbers, but from a
radical change of character. At first purely Jewish, it soon
began to develop closer and closer relations first with the
Hellenistic Jews scattered through the cities of the Levant,
and then with the Gentiles.

The process by which this took place can be very im-
perfectly discerned. Our histories of the change are confused
and full of inconsistencies. The growth of the Hellenistic
element in the society is most clearly shown in the circum-
stances of the appointment of the first deacons. A complaint
had arisen, we are told, that the widows of the Hellenistic
Jews were neglected in the distribution of alms. This com-
plaint can only have arisen at a time when the organisation
of the community had become definite, and the distribution of
alms regular. To remedy the evil, seven deacons were appointed,
and it is notable that the names of all seven are in form
Greek, suggesting that all of them belonged to the class of
Jews of the Diaspora. Two of (lie men thus ordained, Stephen

1 Dissertations on (he Apostolic Age, p. 17.

THE CRISIS OF CHRISTIANITY 293

and Philip, ran a brilliant career iii the Church, and J)r. Light-
foot can hardly be wrong in maintaining that they did much

to widen and make liberal the views of the leading Christians,
and tn prepare a way for the Pauline expansion of the Church.

Of the first admission of Gentiles who did not conform to
the law of Moses, we have various discrepant accounts. Ac-
cording to the existing text of Matthew, Jesus before his
Ascension bade the disciples teach and baptize all nations;
but the attitude taken by the Church at Jerusalem towards
Gentiles shows that this command is not historic. The author
of Acts makes Peter the author of the admission of the Gentiles
to baptism, after his scruples had been removed partly by a
vision at Joppa, and partly by the imparting to the household
of Cornelius before they were baptized of the gift of speaking
with tongues. But Paul, in the Epistle to the Galatians, claims
that the ministry to the Gentiles was his original and special
function, as that to the Jews was the function of James and
Peter and John. It seems to me impossible to resist the
arguments by which Dr. Weizsacker T shows that the account
in Galatians is to be trusted and that in Acts rejected.

Whatever may have been the precise history of the exten-
sion of the Christian fold, there can be no question that it did
extend rapidly and continuously. The section of the Church
which adhered to the ideas which had been dominant just
after the Crucifixion became by degrees a minority, a clique
which could be disregarded. This was mainly the doing of
two or three great teachers who arose in the first century.
But those teachers make it perfectly clear to us in their
writings that it was not their own power or wisdom which
wrought in the Church, but that they were the instruments of
a powerful inspiration, a spiritual force which swayed them
utterly, and to which they owed everything. This force was
revealed frequently in visions and direct revelations of the
Lord, such as Paul speaks of, and such as are in our documents
recorded as having appeared to Peter, Stephen, Philip, and all
the prominent leaders of the Church. And it was also revealed
in a more continuous and inner fashion in the consciousness
of the Apostles. For a time the divine ideas, which underlie
1 . 1 postal ic Age, i. pp. 198-201.

294 EXPLO RATIO EVANGELICA

thought and action in the world, could be more clearly observed
in energising power.

St. Paul is better known to us than any character of his
age. In his letters we can trace his weakness and his strength,
his burning charity and profound insight on the one hand, and
his Rabbinical logic on the other. Some modern writers have
been so strongly impressed by the spirituality of the Pauline
teaching that they have placed Paul above his Master. One
can imagine with what a passionate outburst Paul would have
flung aside this view. He is never tired of declaring that he
owes all that he is, moral qualities and doctrines alike, to that
Master. Himself the least of the Apostles, he is able in the
strength of Christ to do more than they all. But when Paul
thus expresses his utter dependence on his Master, he does
not mean that his inspiration comes down to him from the
tradition of the earthly life of Jesus. Again and again, with
passionate vehemence, he claims not tradition but personal
inspiration as the source of his life and his teaching. Christ,
he claimed, dwelt in him, and worked through him in the
Church, so that he could scarcely be said any longer to live,
except in the heavenly inspirer of his life.

The author of the Fourth Gospel is entirely unknown to us.
The only fixed points in regard to him are that he must have
been educated in the higher Jewish teaching which rose in
Alexandria, and that he must have written later than the
Synoptists. He, like Paul, has his own view as to the origin
of his doctrine. He also does not trust to the mere tradition
of the companions of Jesus for the teaching of his Master.
As regards the events of his Master's life he does use a
valuable tradition, which appears from several passages to
have come through the Apostle John, whose connection with
Ephesus seems to be historic. But the discourses have
another origin. This cannot be doubted by any one who
carefully considers the discourse in John xiv.-xvi. The
Master is there represented as saying (xvi. 12), " I have
yet many tilings to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them
now. Eowbeit, when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he
shall guide you into all the truth : for he shall not speak from
himself; but what things soever he .shall hear, these shall he

THE CRISIS <>/■' CHRISTIANITY 295

speak." Now, according to the context, this was the last
earthly discourse of Jesus. It seems then that the writer was
persuaded that Jesus departed from the earth leaving his
teaching very Incomplete, but meaning to complete it from the
heavenly world by communication of the Holy Spirit. And
in 3ome cases the completion of the teaching of Jesus con-
sisted in the working out of an ideal life of him "The Com-
forter shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your
remembrance, whatsoever I said unto you." It was to this
inward inspiration that the writer trusted for the revelation of
the teaching of the earthly Jesus, as a supplement to the
testimony of the Apostles. Thus in the Fourth Gospel we
have credible and probably authentic accounts of many of the
doings of Jesus: but in reporting the speeches of Jesus, the
writer trusts less to tradition than to inspiration. Now we
know that the highest inward inspiration does not always
convey an exact knowledge of outward fact. No doubt
many Christians will find this hard doctrine, which it
needs some courage to accept. The author of the Fourth
Gospel insists in many places on the value of truth, and
no vice is more hateful to him than untruth. Lying is of
Satan, who is the father of it. And Jesus is represented as
saying that he was born into the world to bear witness to the
truth. All this must remain profoundly unintelligible to us
moderns, apart from the historic imagination. We have an
ingrained notion as to the meaning of the word truth, which
we find it hard to modify. To us what is true is what accords
with the actual fact of sense. But it is quite clear that the
author of the Fourth Gospel meant by truth something quite
different, something more ideal and spiritual. No one who
has the least sense of literary style can possibly suppose that
Jesus talked in the way in which in the Fourth Gospel he is
made to talk, unless the whole of the Synoptic writings are
worthless. It cannot have been the object of the Evangelist
to recover and set forth in a dry light the actual words which
the disciples heard. His whole soul is bent on setting forth
truth as he conceives it. But by truth he means conformity
not to phvsical fact but to higher laws and relations. Truth
is to him the suitable form and embodiment of a divine

296 EXPLORATIO EVANGELICA

revelation manifested in the world without and felt within.
He embodies it in narrative, and in so doing, though he no
doubt intends to adhere to history, yet he sometimes gives us a
version of events which the canons of historic evidence compel
us to reject. This is simply a case of changed intellectual
atmosphere.1

Both Paul and the author of the Fourth Gospel were
passionately devoted to truth, as truth existed for them : that
is to say, to the expression in terms of doctrine and of ideal
history of the contents of the divine revelation which came to
them, and which possessed them with absolute sway. They
lived in communion with the spirit of their Master, and the
spirit of their Master taught them the doctrine which became
the life of the world, and saved Europe from utter destruction.
As Paul has put it in immortal words, " Though we have
known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we
him so no more."

When Mohammed was asked for a miracle, he replied that
the miracle which he had to show was the Koran. Similarly,
the greatest miracles of Christianity are the growth of the
infant Church, the development of a religion destined to occupy
the world, the production of such works as the Gospels and
the Pauline Epistles. These phenomena may not transgress
the order of nature, yet they are in a real sense supernatural.
They reveal the hand of God in human affairs ; they belong
to an order of things higher than that of daily life. The
grain of mustard seed produced a tree beneath the shade of
which all civilised nations have rested.

As it was in the time of St. Paul, so it has been in all
later periods of the history of the Church. The spirit of
Christ has never been extinguished in it. At times the
inspiration has seemed to die down and to be almost smothered
under the mass of materialism and superstition. But the
torch has always been again lighted from above. Decay has
been followed by revival. There have always been some in

1 Compare Wandt, Teaching of Jesus, trans, i. -.">7. This writer shows that
in the Bible generally the word dXi'jOeia, truth, is a translation of a Hebrew
word whicb implies nol so much truth to fad as rectitude of conduct, or even
loyalty to a divine mission.

THE CRISIS OF CHRISTIANITY

the Church who have lived in the life of Christ, and been hia
representatives mi earth. Augustine and Francis, Luther and
\\ .-ley, have professed, like Paul, to derive their better life
from a Master in Heaven; have lived in communion with an
unseen lord. Such communion has not made them infallible
a- regards statements of fact : it has not even made them
infallible in the matters of faith and morals, but it has made
their lives part of the life of Christ in the world. The
treasure is in earthen vessels, but it is still the treasure
through all ages.

It is thus very unsatisfactory to shut off the earthly
ministry of Jesus from the whole subsequent history of
Christianity, and to try to appeal in matters of faith and
doctrine solely to the Master on earth. The movement which
began at the Nativity did not cease at the Crucifixion, but
was only then raised to a higher level of life. Before, the
Christian spirit had been manifesting itself to a few, and in a
narrow field. After, the Christian spirit was facing the wrorld,
struggling with, mastering and absorbing, all sorts of beliefs
and philosophies. Alike persons and institutions, alike customs
and beliefs, had to be baptized into the name of Christ, to put
off their old character and to put on a new character.

In the very early days of the Christian Church two
streams met. In the one stream flowed the religion of Jesus,
in the main a reformed and enlarged Judaism with but little
admixture of the Gentile spirit, but penetrated through and
through with the genius and the unrivalled personality of the
Founder. In the other stream flowed the cosmopolitan religion,
formed on a Greek basis out of the best beliefs and the deepest
convictions of mankind. This stream had taken its rise far
out of sight among the divine inspirations not lacking even to
savage races, but growing clearer and more consistent with
growing culture. India, Iran, Asia Minor, had contributed to
it : but it had received its final form from philosophers and
thinkers and religious reformers of Greece.

If the Ebionites of Jerusalem, the thoroughly Jewish
Christians of the early Church, had triumphed over the Greek
spirit, the religious history of the world would have been cut
in two. The line of development of religion after Christ would

29S EXPLORATIO EVANGELIC A

have takeu quite a different direction from that which it had
taken before Christ. This could not possibly be. At all
events it did not come to pass. There was a great process of
concretion. But the spirit which ruled and shaped the chaos
was the spirit of Christ. By the aid of the continued inspira-
tion of that spirit, the Church succeeded in assimilating and
converting the substance of existing religion. Like a growing
plant it took from air and soil all that was most nourishing,
and converted it into its own substance. It no more created
religion than the tree creates its own sap. And it did not
accept Pagan ideas unmodified any more than the tree absorbs
the foulness of manure or the decay of dead vegetation.

If the present work were a complete account of the rise
of Christianity, our procedure would be to take one by one the
great religious ideas current alike among Jews and Gentiles in
the Hellenistic age, to show how they were modified and
raised by the spirit of Christianity, and then admitted into the
Church. We should have to trace them as they gave rise to
ideal history, to prophecy, and to doctrine. We should watch
them as they became embodied in church service and ceremony,
as they gave the tone to organisation and blossomed out into
art. To revert to our former image, we should have to trace
the sap through the root, which is Christ, up the stem of the
Church, into the leaves of thought, the flowers of art, and the
fruit of works. But it is clear that so great a design could
not be carried out in a single volume, nor by one author.
We must closely limit our task if we mean to bring it to an
end. And we do so by considering only the intellectual
outgrowths which come from the informing idea — ideal history,
prophecy, and doctrine. With the two former, as they make
their iippcaraiire in early Christianity, we have already dealt
briefly. Doctrine remains as the subject to which the rest of
the present treatise must be devoted.

It is instructive summarily to compare the line which we
propose to follow with that taken with regard to other parts
of the early history of Christianity by writers who have a
strong sense of the continuity of history. Mr. Hatch, for
example, in his Barrypton Lectures, has thus dealt with the
organisation of the early Christian churches. His course was

THE CRISIS <>/■- CHRISTIANITY 299

less difficult, because it would be allowed on all hands that
the early organisation of the Church was not the work of the
life of Jesus. Beyond selecting as his companions the twelve

Apostles, Jesus did almost nothing in the direction of deter-
mining the outward form to be taken by the society which he
Pounded. But in the apostolic age the organisation of the
Church rapidly took form by a process resembling crystallisa-
tion, and by the end of the second century it was practically
completed. Yet the credit of the organisation cannot be
given to any particular leader. It seemed to work itself out.
It arose out of existing materials, being partly a continua-
ti ui of the organisation of the synagogues of the Jewish
Diaspora, and partly modelled on the usages of the civil and
religious societies of the great Greek cities in Asia.

Tn much the same way doctrine arose, out of already
existing elements, both Greek and Jewish. The formation of
doctrine in the Church was a process parallel to the outward
organisation of the Church. Here also the substance must be
sought less in the teaching of the Founder than in the pre-
vailing mental and moral conditions of the environment.
Every fresh development and expression of doctrine had to
make, its way amid that environment. But the seed was yet
of divine planting. And as that which is born of God over-
cometh the world, so the root principles of Christianity
gradually moulded their environment to themselves. The
mere fact that Christian truth took the form of doctrine shows
that doctrine was the form necessary for it, the indispensable
husk without which it could not be preserved. But, once
more, doctrine developed amid the conditions of the first
century could scarcely by any possibility be wholly suitable
to the conditions of the present day. The body persists but
the garments change. Or, rather, there is a continuity of life
and of consciousness, but even the particles of the body, as
well as the clothes which it wears, change entirely as time
passes on.

CHAPTER XXIV

EARLY CHRISTIAN LITERATURE

Our knowledge of early Christian doctrine is of course derived
from early Christian literature. It is necessary that I should
state, before going further, the view on which this book pro-
ceeds in regard to the various documents of the early Church.
That I should critically examine them in detail is out of the
question ; a brief statement must suffice. My desire has been
cautiously to accept in regard to each literary document the
verdict of the best criticism, taking what is certain as certain,
and leaving aside, as far as possible, what is disputed.

There is an evident divergence in the directions which our
investigation should take in regard to a professedly historic
work like the Acts, and the Epistles of the Apostles and other
writers. In the case of historic works, what we should decide,
if we can, is their value as history. The date and authorship
are important mainly as helping us to judge of the writer's
opportunity for ascertaining facts and his personal bias. But
in the case of letters and doctrinal discussions a question of
the first importance is authenticity. Are they really the work
of the author whose name they bear ? If so, they are in any
case of the greatest value as documents, giving us his personal
opinions and beliefs. If, however, they arc not authentic, the
date and place of their appearance is still of some historic
importance. They will show us whal views were in vogue in
the different periods and the several spheres of Christian
growth.

Our only professed and continuous history of the apostolic

A". / RL J ' CHRISTIAN 1.1TERA Ti rRE 301

age is the Acta of th Apostles. Tin's is allowed to be a work
by the same author as the Third < rospel, whom we have already

seen to lie somewhat under the dominance of style, and in-
clined to care more for the ethical or ideal tendency of
his narrative than for its accuracy as regards fact aud chrono-
logy. In the Acts he has certainly used materials of very
different degrees of value, as we shall presently see. Tin-
book falls naturally into two parts, chapters i. to xii set
before us the history of the Church at Jerusalem down to
the death of Herod Agrippa in A.D. 44. Chapters xiii. to
xxviii. give an account of the missionary journeys of St. Paul
down to his imprisonment at Koine.

There is one part of Acts which we can characterise
without hesitation, the speeches. We have already seen that
it was the ordinary custom of historians in antiquity to com-
pose speeches for their characters. The .writer of Acts was
certainly no exception to the rule. His speeches are, it must
be allowed, usually skilfully composed and adapted with a
good deal of dramatic skill and mastery of style to the person
who utters them ; though one or two, like the long speech
of Stephen, are somewhat pointless and tedious. We are,
however, compelled to regard the statements made in the
speeches of Acts as due in all cases to the author of the book,
and not conclusive evidence for the views of the speaker into
whose mouth they are put.

Most of the narrative we cannot bring to any decisive
test, not having any parallel account from another source
with which to compare it. In a few cases, however, we are
able to make such comparison ; and we are perfectly justified
in supposing that what we cannot compare is usually on the
same level of accuracy as the specimens which we can bring
to the test.

In some instances there is a collision between statements
of the writer of Acts and Josephus. For example, the cir-
cumstances of the death of Herod Agrippa are given differently
by the two authorities. Again, according to Josephus the
pretender Theudas made his appearance in the reign of
I llaudius, while the author of Acts inserts a reference to him
in the speech of Gamaliel (v. 36), which is of ten years' earlier

EX P LOR ATI O EVANGELICA

date. So again the account given in Matthew of the death of
Judas and the buying of the potter's field (xxvii. 3-10) is
quite inconsistent with the account of the same events given
at the beginning of the Acts. But it would scarcely be fair
on such grounds as these to estimate the historic value of
Acts, because it is possible that the account followed in Acts
may be more trustworthy than that adopted by the rival
historians. We are, however, on much safer ground when we
can compare our writer with himself, or with historic docu-
ments the value of which cannot be disputed.

In the last verses of Luke's Gospel there is an account of
the appearance of the risen Jesus to two disciples at Emmaiis.
They at once (that very hour) hastened to Jerusalem, where
they found the eleven gathered together ; and as they told
their tale, Jesus appeared in the midst. After partaking of
food Jesus led the disciples out towards Bethany, where he
was parted from them and carried up to heaven. All these
events would occupy but a few hours.

In the first verses of Acts the same writer alludes to his
Gospel, which he says carried on the history to the day when
Jesus was received up. But he at once goes on to record a
number of other appearances spread over a period of forty days.
It is almost impossible to doubt that Luke had before him
two inconsistent accounts of the Ascension, which he follows
in turn without seriously trying to reconcile them, or to
decide between them, one account making the Ascension follow-
close on the Resurrection, the other interposing a period of
many weeks. To a modern reader this may seem strange ;
but every one used to the study of ancient historians could
cite many parallel cases.

The circumstances of the conversion of St. Paul are
narrated in three passages in Acts. In ix. 3 Paul is said to
have seen a sudden light, and, fulling to the earth, to have
heard a voice speaking to him, while his companions stood by
speechless, hearing a voice but seeing no man. In xxvi. L3
we have substantially the same account, except that all the
companions are said to have fallen to the ground also. In
xxii. 9 we have a curious variety; the companions of Paul
are said to have seen a light, but heard no voice, of course

EARLY CHRIST! AX LITERATURE 303

to a modern mind the first question which would arise as
regards the whole matter La whether the vision was confined

to the AjM.stli' or witnessed by his companions. In the
former case we should call it subjective; in the latter case it
might claim objectivity. But it is clear that the writer of
Acts had qo notion that external testimony to the reality of

the vision was important, and is quite careless as to what he
says about Paul's companions; the only thing that inter
him is the effect which it had on Paul himself. Of course it
makes no difference whatever that one of the passages cited is
from the narrative part of Acts, the other two from speeches
attributed to Paul; for no one could maintain that these
speeches are reported verbatim.

When Paul in his letters speaks of his vision of his
Master, he uses quite general phrases ; that he had seen the
Lord, that Clod had been pleased to reveal his Son in him,
and the like. With him the line between spiritual experience
and historic fact to be established by testimony is as vague as
to the writer of Acts.

As regards the external events of the life of St. Paul in
the time which followed his conversion, there is irreconcilable
divergency between the narrative in Acts and Paul's own
letter to the Galatians. It is unnecessary to go farther into
this matter. It is discussed, usually with the intention of
reconciling irreconcilable contradictions, in a host of works.
The main facts are to be found in the article " Acts " in the
clopcedia Britannica. To any one wdio goes into the
authorities in a historic frame of mind it becomes clear, either
that Paul had persuaded himself to accept a version of his
own life far from the facts, or else that the author of Ads was
very imperfectly acquainted with the life of the Apostle, or
very indifferent as to historic accuracy.

The true character of the narrative, at all events in the
earlier part of Ads, appears perhaps most clearly from an
examination of the account there given of the events of the
day of Pentecost. We are told that on that day, after flames
of fire had fallen from heaven and settled on the Apustles,
they began to speak to the strangers in Jerusalem, each in
his own language. The gift of tongues here appears as a

304 EXPLORATIO EVANGEL1CA

clear miracle, as the direct bestowal on the Apostles of a
power of speaking in languages which they had never learned
or studied. But the power of speaking with tongues, a
common gift in the early Church, did not enable its possessor
to speak in foreign languages, but to speak in an exalted or
ecstatic fashion. From 1 Corinthians xiv. we learn all about
the power ; and we find that he who spoke with tongues
needed an interpreter, or he could not be understood. The
custom of speaking in an ecstasy and unintelligibly has often
arisen among enthusiastic societies in various ages of the
Church ; it is a well-known phenomenon of religious revivals.
It would appear then that the author of Acts or his authorities
must have misinterpreted an ordinary phenomenon of religious
enthusiasm into a purely miraculous gift from above. Tradition
and idealisation have gradually broidered the events of nascent
Christianity, until they stand quite out of relation to the
experience of the Church.

There are, no doubt, certain parts of Acts which stand on
a higher level as regards credibility. The latter part of the
book has far greater claims to be regarded as historical than
the earlier part. And in particular the passages which evi-
dently derive from one of the companions of St. Paul in his
travels, in which the word we continually occurs, have a
decided air of truth and comparative accuracy. Some critics
in Holland l have been so strongly impressed by the character
of this narrative, that they have elevated it into being the
main authority for the life and teaching of Paul. And finding
the impression of the Apostle which it conveys to be not
wholly consistent with the contents of the Epistles of Paul, they
have ventured to reject these latter as unauthentic works of a
later age. These views are confined to a small and extreme
school. The ordinary reader can clearly see that whereas the
Epistles take us into the very heart and conscience of Paul,
the we narrative only livings before us his outward circum-
stances and his actions. Nevertheless it is a document of
great value, and the recent writings of Professor Kanisay,
which deal with St. Paul as a traveller and a citizen of Rome,

1 A concise account of tin's curious aberration in criticism will lie found in
A. Meyer's Moderne Forschtmg fiber die Oeschichte dee Urch/ristentwms, p. 14

EARL ) ' ( HRISTIAN LITERA Tl rRE 305

have helped tn vindicate its accuracy and authenticity. Mr.
Ramsay is very successful in showing that the author of this
narrative was well acquainted with the geography, the political
conditions, the Bocial organisation of the country traversed by

Paul. I iut obviously this does not directly prove the narrative to
lie in all points accurate And in fact, in the heart of the Wi
narrative we have some accounts, such as that of the earth-
quake at Philippi, which we are by no means justified in
accepting as unvarnished history.

Whether the author of the we narrative is also the compiler
of the whole book of Acts is a disputed point. This com-
piler, whoever he may have been, undoubtedly used a
variety of material, good and bad, the we narrative being
certainly the best. This material he moulds and adapts to a
purpose which can still be traced. In a previous chapter,
when speaking of Christian miracle, we found a remarkable
parallelism between the miracles assigned by the author of
Acts to Paul and those which he assigns to Peter. The
same parallelism runs through all the book. It was maintained
by the school of Tubingen that the author of Acts intended
his work to be an eirenicon, and to bring nearer together the
ultra-Jewish section of the Church, which had its centre in
Palestine, and the Gentile Churches, mostly of Pauline founda-
tion. Whether there was in the mind of the author of Acts any
conscious purpose of this kind has since been doubted. But
the tendency of his work, whether consciously pursued or not,
is certainly peace-making. The relations between James and
Peter and other leaders of the Hebraic section of the Church,
and the great Apostle of the Gentiles, are made smoother than
from the Pauline letters they would seem to have been in fact.
Peter and Paul are exhibited as the morning and evening star
of the Church, seldom visible together, but each beautiful and
appropriate in his own sphere. This task of reconciliation is
eminently suited to the beautiful spirit of the writer of the
Third Gospel. Although the school of Tubingen made too
much of the clashing of Jew and Gentile tendency in the
Church, yet no one can deny that such clashing took place, or
that the Catholic Church is based, as Borne has always main-
tained, on the joint labours and teaching of Peter and Paul.

306 EXPLO RATIO EVANGELICA

It seems that the conscious or unconscious purposes of the
author of Acts, and his views as to the special missions of
his heroes, tend greatly to colour and even to mould his
narrative. As Professor Ramsay allows, he was indifferent to
chronology. As M. Kenan shows, he cared infinitely less for
fact and accuracy than for tendency and ideas. If he wrote
the third Gospel he was of gentle, spiritual, almost feminine,
temperament, with a liking for the miraculous, and a strong
prejudice against wealth and station. Also he was endowed
with much literary taste and skill, so that he became an artist
in words almost unconsciously. On the whole, then, whatever
value may attach to Acts as our only narrative of early church
history, and however truly it may reflect the surroundings
amid which Christianity began its growth, yet we cannot
regard the book as very satisfactory from the modern historical
point of view.

The Pauline letters are works of a very different kind, an
incomparable reflex of one of the most interesting personalities
that ever lived, an impression taken direct from a heart which
beat only for the Church and the Head of the Church. Apart
from these letters our knowledge of early Christianity would
be indeed weak and faint. With them we may fairly say
that there is scarcely any personage of ancient history so well
known to us as Paul, and that by their influence on Paul we
can best judge of his contemporaries. There is only one
source of doubt and hesitation as we dwell on these incom-
parable documents : the doubt how far they are authentic.
In the present work, which deals with all the phenomena of
infant Christianity in a slight and general way, this question
is not nearly so important as it would be to a historian of
detail. Yet it must be faced. I can only set down here the
views as to the various letters ascribed to Paul which are
accepted in the present work. They are not in the least
original: in fact I have only endeavoured to ascertain what is
the general result of the most judicial criticism.

The Epistles to the Romans, Corinthians (1st and 2nd) ami
Galatians are primary. Their authenticity is practically
undisputed. They are absolutely full of inspiration and of
character, personal, glowing. They offer us a mine of infor-

EARL V CHRIS TIAN LITERA Tl RE 307

[nation as to the author himself, the circumstances of the
Church, the tendencies of early I Ihristianity. They are historic
authorities in the strictest sense; though of course they can

only bring before us history as mirrored in the mind of Paul,
aot history in an objective sense. Paul, like all his Jewish
contemporaries, cared hut little for accuracy of detail, and
regarded spiritual truth as of incomparably more importance
than material facts. He reail the past in the light of personal
experience, and saw the present with eyes more sensitive to

i and evil, to tendencies and hopes, than to precise outline.
He was in fact an Apostle and not a historian.

The Epistles to the Ephesians, Philippians, and Colossians
cannot be with the same confidence attributed to Paul; and

d the critics who regard them as Pauline often find in them
interpolations by other hands. They certainly represent a
different side of Paulinism from that most prominent in the
Roman and Galatian Epistles. It has been disputed whether
this change of view is the result of passing years in Paul
himself, or whether it arises because these later letters were
from the hand not of the Apostle but of a follower. That
they wmild be in the latter case, technically speaking, forgeries,
is a truth which need not too strongly influence our judgment,
since in those days it was not regarded as immoral or dishonest
to bring out a work of one's own under the aegis of a respected
name. Nevertheless criticism seems now disposed to allow
the Pauline origin of the core of these Epistles. Fully accept-
ing this view, I have felt at liberty to use the Epistles freely

representing in general the later views of the great Apostle.
Even if they do not give us the views of Paul, they give us
those of his immediate followers : a thing almost equally im-
portant

The Pastoral Epistles which bear the name of Paul must
be used with greater caution. Certain passages in them,
especially the salutations and personal messages, such as that
about the cloak left at Troas, have a very real air; and some
recent German critics think that these passages may be taken
from actual letters of Paul. But the majority of learned critics
think that the kind of organisation which the letters to Timothy
and Titus imply as existing in the churches, must belong to a

3o8 EXPLORATIO EVANGELIC A

later time than that of Paul. The question is one with which
the present book is little concerned. To the historian of
Christian institutions it is most important to determine whether
the office of bishop had arisen in the Pauline Churches before
the time of Nero. But we are here concerned not with
organisation but with doctrine. And as the Pastoral Epistles
contain no trace of the doctrine of apostolic succession, or of
the doctrine of episcopal supremacy, as developed by Ignatius
and Irenasus, they do not properly come within our scope.
It would certainly not be justifiable to use detached passages
of them as evidence of the views of Paul on any subject.

The authenticity of the Epistles of James and Peter (1st)
has been much in dispute in recent years. The reason for
doubting whether James the brother of Jesus wrote the
epistle assigned to him lies mainly in the want of satisfactory
ancient attestation. It reflects the views of that party among
the Jews which had received Christianity but can scarcely be
said to have assimilated it ; of which party James seems to
have been the leader. 1st Peter, on the other hand, is referred
to the Apostle by abundant ancient testimony. If it is
genuine, it shows that Peter towards the end of his life accepted
a theology closely akin to the Pauline. In itself this is im-
probable ; but we are dealing with a period in which the
improbable was constantly occurring.

Besides Paul and the author of the Fourth Gospel, the
only important speculative theologian of the New Testament
is the author of the Ujristlc to the Hebrews. Here, however,
there is no question of authenticity, since the Epistle is
anonymous. It represents a notable tendency of thought in
early Christianity, the tendency to cling to the Old Testament,
but to interpret it in a spiritual and symbolical rather than a
literal fashion, in the light of the Christian faith. We may
fairly say that whereas other writers of the New Testament
cited the earlier Scriptures as a Jewish witness, the writer .if
Hebrews has Christianised them, baptized them into the faith.
Who this writer may have been Is altogether uncertain. He
was certainly a Jew win.) wrote mainly for his countrymen.
Yet he shows many traces of Pauline influence. He comes
before us merely as an inspired voice speaking in the early

EARLY CHRISTIAN UTERA TURE 309

Christian community, and bridging the abyss which separated
the Eebrew religion of the ancient world from the new
( Ihristianity.

Outside the canonic writings of the New Testament there
are Borne treatises of the apostolic age which are of great im-
portance in tlic history of belief and doctrine. Among these
the most valuable is the Didachi or Teaching of the Twelve
Apostles, first published by the Archbishop Bryennius in 1883.
It is an anonymous work, dating from the latter part of the
first, or the early part of the second century. It is of extra -
ordinary simplicity and sincerity, and fills up a great gap in
our knowledge by furnishing us with a summary of the ritual

ipted in many Judseo-Christian circles which stood outside
the influence of Paul and his school. Perhaps the greatest of
the advantages possessed by the book is that it comes to us
fresh, and not overlaid with the commentaries and controversies
of centuries. We can look at it in a natural and historic
fashion, apart from theological preconceptions; and for that
reason it lias had and is having great influence upon all
theologians and church historians who are open to evidence
and to reason. In particular, it proves how great variety in
practice and in doctrine prevailed in the first century of the
history of Christianity; and how far from the mark are those
ecclesiastical historians who fancy that the Christian Church
had from the first a definite organisation and a fixed body of
doctrine.

The apostolic or sub-apostolic fathers, such as Barnabas
and Clement, are not of great importance to us. The question
whether the writings attributed to them are authentic is the
less important because those writings do not bear the im-
press of commanding personality or of intellectual greatness.
[gnatius is a more impressive figure; and there has been, as is
well known, a prolonged and heated controversy as to the
authenticity of the various letters which bear his name. An
English writer can scarcely do otherwise than accept, in this
matter, the verdict of Dr. Lightfoot.1 But Dr. Lightfoot is
careful to emphasize the fact that though the Ignatian epistles
set great store by the episcopal office, they contain no trace of
1 Well summarised by Cruttwell, Lit'- rani History, i. 80.

3io EXPLORATIO EVANGELICA

the notion of apostolic succession, nor do they speak of
episcopacy as a divine ordinance. The position of the bishop
rests on social and ecclesiastical rather than doctrinal
grounds. Dr. Lightfoot observes that " no distinct traces of
sacerdotalism are visible in the ages immediately after the
Apostles." l The sacerdotal tendency appears not in Ignatius
nor in Iremeus, but for the first time in Tertullian, who lived
at a period later than that of which we treat.

One other class of writers must be mentioned, the
Apologists, such as Aristides and Justin, who brought before
the great Emperors of the second century reasons why they
should tolerate, or even encourage, the faith of Christ, or tried
to vindicate to Pagan readers the claims of their religion.
The great value of these apologies lies in the fact that they
were primarily intended, not for the edification of the faithful,
but for consideration by heathens and statesmen. They therefore
present a more objective and cool-headed view of Christianity
than do the writings intended only for Christians. They help
us to see the religion more in the light in which it would
appear to philosophic bystanders. As we know very little of
these Apologists from other sources, the question whether the
works ascribed to them are rightly attributed is unimportant ;
the historic value of tlnse works lies entirely in their point of
view and the manner in which they reflect the religious
controversies of the age.

Such, in brief, is the literature on which we mainly depend
for the history and the ideas of the apostolic and sub-apostolic
ages. It is terribly defective. To compose anything like a
true historic picture of the period, we should need, in addition
to the works which have come down to us, a mass of those
which have perished. Our materials are hopelessly one-sided.
The writings of the important Christian teachers who happened
to be branded as heretical have mostly perished, or are only
preserved to us in the fragmentary and misleading quotations
of the controversialists who attempted to refute them. Of the
religious systems which hail the closest relations to Christianity,
the Mithraic, Orphic, and [siac faiths, we can gain with all our
diligence but a most imperfect notion; so that of the inter-
1 Lightfoot, Dissertations on tht J/ms/n/;,- ./,/,, pp. 211, 217, 219.

EARLY CHRISTIAN L1TERA Tl rRE 31 1

action of influence between them and the nascent Church we
can scarcely judge at all Monks without literary conscience,
and with a keen nose for unorthodoxy, have been our
librarians, and have handed down to us only what they judged
to tend to edification.

Happily, wit Inn the last few years an entirely new and
invaluable source of knowledge has begun to How, or at least
to drip. Researches in the monasteries of the East, and
excavations in the tombs of Egypt, have in late years restored
to us a few priceless records of early Christianity, of the very
class which the funned prejudices of mediaeval Christianity
had adjudged to destruction. If this source of knowledge
becomes more prolific, it is possible that archaeology may in
some degree redress the balances of history, and that our
conceptions of the early Church may grow nearer to fact and
to human nature. We may cease to feel, when we turn in
imagination to the first two centuries of Christianity, as if we
were wandering in a bazaar of objects of piety. We may
learn to discard the crude notion that the history of the early
Church consists of a series of victorious campaigns of the
depositaries of infallible truth against the cruel worshippers of
idols without, and the opposition of foolish and wicked heretics
within. And in so doing, the human race will make as
decided progress as it made when our fathers gave up the
belief in a six days' creation by an external anthropomorphic
deity, and accepted instead the belief in a continuous
evolutionary force working from within, but not therefore
necessarily freed from divine control and direction.

CHAPTEK XXV

IDEA AND DOCTRINE

We have seen * how ethical myths in their decay give way
not only to history, parable, and prophecy, but also to doctrine.
History, parable, and prophecy have to do with the conditions
of the present sensuous world. Doctrine has to do not with
that world but with the spiritual world which lies in and
beneath it. Doctrine is assertion as to the deeper nature of
man, or of the spiritual powers with which man has inter-
course. It is not usually an assertion of fact, although based
upon fact, but it is a reflection upon the heavens arched above
us of an image of man's profounder and more lasting life.

In an earlier chapter (IV) I examined the genesis of
doctrine from the individual and psychological point of view.
I then maintained that it was an intellectual embodiment of
the supersensual experiences of men. The inward feeling that
a divine power urges man towards righteousness is the true
experiential basis of the doctrine that God is good. And
there is a similar basis of experience to other more special
doctrines such as those of the forgiveness of sins, the divine
providence, and the efficacy of prayer.

There may appear to be some inconsistency in making
doctrine at once the corollary of experience and the embodi-
ment of an idea. But the inconsistency is only apparent.
If we had based doctrine on any sensuous or outward
experience, then undoubtedly we should have taken a view
quite inconsistent with its embodying ideas. But inner or
1 Above, Chap. X.

IDEA AND DOCTRINE 313

spiritual experience is, in its whole character, quite different
from that which comes of sense and observation. It lies in
the land of ideas, of communication between man and the
higher Power. Thus thai which is to the individual an
experience appears in the history of the race as the dawning
of an idea To use the mathematical expression, the one is a
statical, the other a dynamical explanation of the same group
of phenomena

The experiences which lie at the basis of religious doctrine
are not, as has been already pointed out, those of the barbarian,
but those of civilised men. But they are clearly not for that
reason less safe and trustworthy. And even among barbarians
we may commonly find them in an embryonic form. The tree
grows among primitive men, hut it bears wild fruit, and needs
pruning and tending before it will bring forth produce fit to
sustain the life of cultivated man. Thus, when we look to
history, we find the divine ideas by slow degrees working their
way into the ethical life of man, and by degrees adapting to
higher purposes thought and customs which were often in
origin unmoral and unattractive. And su doctrine is gradually
formulated, not by any sudden revelation, but by the gradual
penetration of man's thought as to his spiritual surroundings
by ideas.

Doctrine looked at in this relative light is seen to he in
Logical <>ider, and sometimes in actual descent, a successor
of myth. This may perhaps be made clearer if we take two
or three instances from Bellas and from Judaea.

< in.- of the chief seats of religious doctrine in Greece was
Eleusis, the ancienl seal of the .Mysteries of Demeter and
Cora Whatever may have been the origin of those Mysteries,
an origin almost hidden in the mists of the past,1 the Eleusinian
celebration was in later classical times permeated by the sense
of the life beyond the -rave, and at every recurrence of the
festival hundreds of men and women crowded thither in the
hope of a surer trust in the possible victory over death. I
speak of a sense of an undying life, rather than of a belief in a
future life, because it is the sense which comes first, and is the

1 I may refer to the 24th chapter of Mr. Jevons5 Introduction to the History of
n for an excellent discussion of this matter.

314 EXPLORATIO EVANGELIC A

basis alike of belief and of doctrine. This sense that man
does not belong merely to the world of time and space is a
permanent fact of human nature, visible in the lives of
thousands in all ages. And the permanent fact seeks an
explanation ; the sense requires an embodiment in myth or in
doctrine. In the first place, it seized upon and appropriated
to itself some of the most beautiful of early Greek myths, the
carrying away of Cora, the passionate grief of her goddess
mother, and her restoration every year to the upper air: myths
which originally were doubtless connected with the physical
phenomenon of the annual springing of the corn, but which
were transplanted from that connection into a more mystic and
spiritual realm. And the same sense of an undying life worked
out for itself at Eleusis a doctrinal expression. There was
never at the Mysteries an authorised creed ; the Greek priests
were fonder of image and feeling than of an intellectual
structure of faith. But we can easily imagine a convinced
votary of the two goddesses saying, " I believe in the life
beyond death, in the realm of Hades and august Persephone,
in a land where vice will be punished, and virtue meet with a
fitting reward." Such a creed was at least implicit in the
celebration of the Mysteries ; and it underlies the words of
poets and philosophers when they speak with emotion of
Eleusis.

In the writings of the Greek poets we find doctrine often
alternating with myth. I have already observed that pre-
sumption was a vice as to which the Greek conscience was
very sensitive, and which gave rise to or took possession of
many Hellenic myths. But it also found abundant expression
in statements which are strictly doctrinal, as in Sophocles'
lines : l " Zeus hates beyond measure the boastings of a lofty
tongue." Here the mention of Zeus and the attribution to
him of anger and hatred is doctrinal. The experience was
that punishment followed presumption, but that experience
needed to be expressed in terms comprehensible to those who
accepted the Greek Pantheon.

Doctrine in Greece was largely concerned with the life
after death and tin' condition <»t' the departed. Here we may

1 Antigone, 128.

IDEA AND DOCTRINE

rve one doctrinal view succeeding another. This is clearly

- ■ .11 in tin- case of the Athenian slayers of the tyrant
Hipparchus, the friends Earmodius and Aristogeiton. There
were do names on which Attic piety dwelt more lovingly than
on theirs. Immediately after the expulsion of Bipparchus'
brother Hippias, and the rest of the tyrant's brood, the feasts
of the liberated Athenians re-echoed to the drinking son- which
told how Harmodius was not dead but lived in the Islands of
the Blest, with Achilles and other heroes of old time. But
the Islands of the Blest passed into the background of the
Greek pious imagination, being superseded in general belief hy
the groves of Persephone in Hades. Hence at a later time we
find the orator Hyperides dwelling on the men of renown who
await in Hades the coming of Leosthenes and those who fell
with him in battle, and among them a conspicuous place is
taken by the illustrious dead heroes Harmodius and Aristogeiton.
Thus we trace in the course of two centuries the formation of
two successive doctrines as to the ahode of the tyrant-slayers,
which was placed earlier in the western islands, and later in
the Kingdom of Persephone, which lies beneath our feet.

"What a belief in the future life was to the best of the
Greeks, that to the Jews was the sense of the religious mission
of their race. This sense dominates their literature, and gives
birth alike to myth and to the various outgrowths of myth
whereof I have spoken. Pure myth is found in abundance in
the earlier chapters of Genesis, but with the appearance of
Abraham it gives place to what looks like history. This
history is penetrated through and through by motive and
moral, though the Jews did no doubt think of Abraham and
his family as really existent ancestors of their own. And the
same sense of a national calling and inspiration gives birth to
abundant parables in the Prophets, such as the touching
parallel sketched by Hosea between Israel and an unfaithful
wife. It also in Daniel produces magnificent prophecies of
the fall of the great kingdoms of the Gentiles, and their super-
session by a renovated and purified Israel. "What, however,
we are at the moment in search of is an embodiment of the
same feeling more directly to the intellect in the form of
doctrine or doLrma. This is not far to seek; it is indeed

3 1 6 EX PL OR A TIO E V ANGELIC A

familiar to us all iu those magnificent chapters of the later
Isaiah, which are among the noblest expressions of religious
feeling ever uttered. " Doubtless Thou art our Father," writes
the prophet ; " Thou, 0 Lord, art our Father, our Redeemer."
The divine sonship of Israel was the best doctrinal statement
of his mission. And the character of that mission itself is set
forth in other passages of the same writer, especially in the
chapter beginning " Who hath believed our report," in words
which are commonly applied, and justifiably, by Christians to
the Founder of their faith, yet which in their origin had a
different reference.

Though religious doctrine may often directly succeed
religious myth, as its more complete and intellectual expression,
yet it would not of course be possible to maintain that in all
or in most cases this takes place. In fact, doctrine usually
belongs to a far later, more self-conscious, and more articulate
stage of human society than does myth. In the mythical age
the religious experiences which give rise to doctrine are not
clearly realised. In Greece, where myth was abundant,
higher religious experience was the endowment, not of the
masses among whom myth arose, but of the few who turned
from popular religion to philosophy. The constructed myths
or parables of Plato stand much nearer to later religious ideas
than do the myths of Zeus or Apollo. And in Judtea, where
the religious faculties were keen, there was from early times a
tendency to express religious experience rather in ideal history
than in myth, though of course the line between myth and
ideal history is very hard to draw. Thus the sequence of
religious doctrine to religious myth, though logically correct,
cannot in many cases be made out. And it is better, in
tracing the growth of doctrine, not to be too anxious to
affiliate it to known myth.

In order briefly to illustrate the gradual evolution of
doctrine by the inward working of a divine idea, or, in other
woids, by the growth of perception of the relation of the
human to the divine, I will sketch the history of three of the
stems of religious doctrine. I select in preference such stems
of doctrine as do nol belong at all specially to Christianity,
but to all religions worthy of the name. Lei us consider the

IDEA AND DOCTRINE 317

habit of prayer, the necessity of purification, and the desire of
salvation

Let as 6rst briefly regard the history of prayer, not of
course with any of the completeness which either the scientific
theologian or the anthropologist would feel to be accessary, but
in mere outline.

Prayer is said to be unknown to many debased tribes,
which believe in the existence around them of disembodied
spirits, but do not attempt to hold communication with them.
However this be, it is certain that among many peoples at
a very low stage of civilisation it is the custom to address
petitions to earth-spirits or deceased ancestors, often 1111-
distinguishable from such spirits, and to ask of them success in
war, or in the chase, tine weather, or smooth waves, increase of
crops, of flocks and herds, or of children : any of those boons
which are most necessary to the existence and the prosperity
of savages.

In its origin prayer does not seem to have any ethically
religious bearing at all ; it is purely egotistic and quite un-
moral. But by degrees there enter into it the germs of higher
possibilities. In this case, as is so often the case in biological
evolution, organism fitted to bear a higher meaning and to
serve a loftier purpose makes its appearance long before that
meaning and that purpose are visible. The brain of the
savage is far more complicated than his simple life requires,
and his hand is an instrument far more delicate than lie can
use to full advantage. In the same way his appeal to
surrounding spiritual powers may be a superstition; but it is
calculated to serve in time as the means of a far higher
development and the vehicle of a far loftier life than any with
which he is acquainted. Spiritual prayer, one of the highest
functions of the noblest men, could not have found a vehicle
had the savage not learned to venerate dead ancestors, and to
address them in tones of entreaty.

Prayer being once established as an institution becomes
with time the vehicle in which works from age to age tin-
divine idea of the surrender of the will of man to the will of
God. At first sight it seems very ill-adapted for such a
purpose. It seems adapted rather to be the instrument of the

3iS EXPLORATIO EVANGELIC A

self-assertion of the will of the individual, bending to its own
purposes the powers even of the spiritual world. And no
doubt strong egotistic purpose is in many lands the mark of
prayer, and survives in more civilised countries among those
addicted to sorcery and witchcraft, who think that repeated
prayers confer on those who offer them not only a degree of
absolute merit, but also actual power over the spirits, to bend
them to human will. Unless the Power which works for
righteousness were real and living, this tendency would be the
natural and inevitable result of the custom of praying. But
this tendency in the course of history comes into collision with
a force far stronger than itself. Men come into the presence
of the powers of the unseen world in simple egotism ; but they
are subdued and converted ; and they learn that there is a
higher good than that after which they were striving, and a
purpose in their lives beyond the mere desire of self-
gratification.

Nor is it only among the higher races and in the history
of the nobler religions that we may discern such workings.
The barbarous Khonds of Orissa l sometimes end their long-
drawn prayers with the words, " We are ignorant of what it is
good to ask for. You know what is good for us. Give it to
us." And at a somewhat higher stage the words "for us" will
drop out, and men will ask for what is good not merely for
the asker, but for others and for mankind.

With the continued practice of prayer, the egotism which
demands good for one's self and the natural affection which
demands gratifications for one's relations and friends, though
they do not die away, pass more or less into the background.
Man learns that the higher the tone of his request, the more
sure it is to lie granted; and thus there slowly dawns upon
him the conception of a divine will which wills what is best.
He learns to pray rather for delivery from the fear of his
enemies than fur delivery out of the Imml of his enemies:
from tli'' fear of death rather than from dying. He seeks
inner changes rather than mere outward interpositions. And

his conception becomes more and more concrete and
objective, man perceives more and more that his highest
1 Tylor, Primitive Culture, ii. p. 369!

IDEA AND DOCTRINE 319

wisdom and happiness is to conform his own will to thai
which is divine. Then prayers become less 11 series of
petitions than a communion with the unseen: [nstead of
trying to gain what he wishes, man Learns to try to conform
his wishes to the will of God, revealed to him day by day and
tVlt by him to embody the ideal life. And bo some of the
philosophers, even before the Christian era, had anticipated
that prayer of "Thy will be done" which musl remain always
the highest form of the address of man to his Maker.

Another of the great ethical-religious ideas which may be
traced through a hundred manifestations in the evolution of
society is that of purity. In this case also we start with
what has little moral meaning. Ceremonial purifications in
connection with the worship of gods and daemons are found
among all nations, even the lowest. They are quite distinct
from, and have scarcely any connection with, hygienic regula-
tions. Their main motive is that man needs preparation,
needs to lay aside the stains of ordinary daily life before he is
fit to approach the spiritual powers of the world. Even
among savages this idea prompts frequently to practices of
violent asceticism ; the initiation of a youth among the
aborigines of America or Australia will often bring him to the
verge of death. In the enthusiastic cults of the ancient
nations of Asia Minor and Syria this passion for purity, mixed
in a strange fashion with elements of licentiousness, prompted
the vi italics of Cybele and Sabazius and Mithras to self-
mutilation, as the readiest and most obvious means of attaining
what was desired.

It was by slow degrees that there worked through the
desire of ceremonial purity the discovery that the gods desired
a purity which was inward. The Hebrew prophet has given
this feeling expression in the words, " Cleanse your hearts ami
not your garments." And in the writings of Plato we find
assertions that it is an inner and not an outward purification
which makes a man iit to come into the presence of Cud.

As in the case of prayer, so in that of purity: the evolu-
tion is by no means strictly chronological. As in the history
of heathendom, so in the history of Christianity: there has
always been a struggle between the lower and the higher

EX PL OR A TIG E VA XGELICA

rendering. The great majority of Christians still look upon
ceremonial preparations as necessary for an acceptable approach
to God. And no good whatever comes from a mere attack
upon their beliefs. It is better that their religion should lie
mainly in what is visible and material than that it should
give way to an empty scepticism. The idea is ever working,
and it is far better for mankind that its acceptance should be
made easier by the existence of a materialist vehicle for its
reception. Without some vehicle it could never have come on
terms with human life at all.

In the third place we may consider the history of the idea
of salvation. It may to some appear a paradox to say that
the doctrine of salvation is by no means especially Christian.
But such is the simple historic fact. Christianity has given
a tinge of its own to the doctrine, but it has existed from very
early times, and among most civilised or half-civilised peoples.

The saving which the barbarian asks of his ghostly deities
is no doubt primarily a materialistic one : that the arrows of
his foes may not reach him, and that the pestilence may not
enter his house. But it is very certain that barbarians are
by no means pure materialists. They are acutely conscious
of the presence of immaterial powers which help and which
endanger not only the life of the body but that of the spirit.
Hence they resort to medicine -men, seeking some spell or
incantation which may serve them as a talisman to ward off
the attacks of ghostly foes. But there is one time of special
need. When a man's soul quits its mortal tenement to set
out on a journey to the land of shades, it is in a very special
degree open to the attacks of malign spirits. The power
which at that moment can shield the shuddering soul is
indeed a power which brings it salvation.

In the Orphic and Eleusinian Mysteries of Greece the
doctrine of the future life had a great part. And that which
was especially promised to the votaries was protection on the
road of the spirits from the evil powers which infested it.
On this subject we have more to say in the next chapter,
Superstitious as wen- the doctrines, and uncleanly as were the
observances of the obscure sects of later Greece, we yel owe
to them what is on the whole a higher turn given to many of

IDEA AND DOCTRINE 321

the conceptions familial- to the Greek mind. In the classical
Literature and the public inscriptions of Greece the words o-co&iv
and acoTi'jp nearly always refer to material preservation and
- ifety : but tin-- societies which venerated Sabazius and Sarapis
and Mithras believed in a Bafety and salvation which were at
least of a more inward and spiritual kind, and sought these by
frequent prayers and devotions.

Any one who consults a concordance of the Bible can see
how the meaning of the word save changes and rises as one
passes from the Pentateuch and the historical books of the
< »ld Testament to the Psalms and Isaiah. In the earlier
Stages of Israel's history it has a predominantly worldly and
temporal meaning: at a later time the salvation longed for
by the inspired writers is not merely worldly but spiritual,
involving a right relation to God, and a consequent state in
one's self.

Among Christians we find all three of the renderings of
the word save in use, the lower, the middle, and the higher
meaning. Some most earnestly desire safety from foes and
the mischances of life. Some most frequently and most
ardently desire the salvation of their souls after death from
the flames of hell and the power of Satan. The more spiritual
schools of Christianity rather lay stress on the need of salva-
tion from one's own worse self and from the terrible power of
evil habit The lines of pre-Christian hope and feeling are
tarried on; but the Christian differs from the Pagan and the
Jew because he hopes to receive that kind of salvation which
he most desires from his Saviour in heaven.

The developments which spring from an idea in any age
depend on the outward conditions of that age. What kind of
doctrine arises from it depends mainly upon the intellectual
atmosphere; what kind of ceremony and art it originates

nds upon social condition and the habits of daily life.
The same idea may bear quite different fruits under varying
circumstances of soil and atmosphere. And to trace the idea
through the manifestation requires great ability and imagina-
tion, requires the exercise of the highest gifts of historical
insight.

It is, however, harder still to discern any law in the sue-

322 EXPLORATIO EVANGELICA

cession of the ideas themselves. They come from the unknown
regions of the ideal into human life ; their source is inscrutable
to the intellect of man. Sometimes in studying the history
of the past we seem to discern something of their order ; but
the nearer we come to our own times the more it battles us.
This, however, does seem to be true, that none of the great
ideas of religion after being once revealed to the world ever
passes wholly away. It grows or decays among us, but it does
not disappear.

In so far as doctrine is the immediate expression in terms
of intellect of the ultimate realities of religious experience, it
remains true for all men and all time. Such theses as that
God is one and that God is merciful belong to all worthy
religions, and no one can deny them without offending religion
itself. But such statements as these, though they are the
backbone of la religion, make up but a small part of les
religions. Every form of faith which has power and acceptance
among men adds to the bare framework of that religion which
is immediately verifiable. Colour and form are necessary that
religion should appeal not merely to the heart and experience,
but to thought and imagination.

So among the great historic religions, systems of doctrine
have arisen which lest more or less on the ground of ex-
perience, but which build on that ground and on real or
supposed historic fact vast temples of interdependent beliefs
and theories mounting towards heaven, and liable to decay,
and likely to be thrown down by the shocks of time.

The development of a scheme of doctrine is seldom the
work of one of those great religious leaders who make epochs
in human history. But after such leaders have broken the
way and prepared the ground, doctrines arise among their
successors and disciples. And they are really formed in a far
less degree than the formers suppose out of the original teach-
ing of the founders, and in a far greater degree out of the
pre-existing material which lies to hand in the religious beliefs
of the age and the existing tendencies of the awakened
enthusiasm.

In spite of all difficulties inherent in the formulation of
doctrine, doctrine must be formulated. There arc periods of

IDEA AND DOCTRINE 323

enthusiasm; but enthusiasm cannot last for ever in any com-
munity. While tin- enthusiasm lasts men despise all worldly
considerations and act only for the glory of God. And al the
same time they are ready to make light of the needs of
intellect, to make religious zeal all in all, and to despise mere
knowledge But these powerful movements sooner or Later
lose their first energy, and the stream of life sinks to its old
level. Then the existing and dominant religious ideas of the
community, which for a time seemed to be overwhelmed by
the flood of new life and feeling, gradually emerge, and haw
to be accommodated in the new scheme of religion. Philo-
sophy has to be conciliated. Also mundane impulses and
desires begin to prevail against those of the higher life ; so
that the religious guides of mankind feel compelled to make
compromises, and to make allowances among their followers
for the calls of human nature. Then also, and for the same
reasons, a corresponding allowance has to be made to the
intellect. Religious knowledge has by some means or other
to be put upon terms with ordinary secular knowledge. Men
feel the strain of living in two worlds at once too great for
them to bear, and they try to reduce the two worlds to some
common ground.

Then comes the necessity of clear definitions, of exact
statements, of a scheme of the universe framed from the new
point of view, and capable of being defended against the
philosophic assaults of those who maintain the old order of
things. Doctrine arises. The burning flow of teaching cools
like the lava from a volcano, and covers the earth with a new
and fertile soil. It may be that the new movement had not
sufficient intellectual force and rational basis to develop a new-
system of thought. In that case it is doomed at once to pass
away. Men will not and cannot accept in cold blood what
does not satisfy their intellects. If feeling decays and leaves
behind it no solid legacy of thought, then the world is as if
that feeling had never been, and falls back at once into its
old ways.

If, however, the new movement has enough vital force to
frame a satisfactory scheme of the world, it may grow and
flourish. It was thus with Christianity. In a few generations

324 EXPLORATIO EVANGELICA

the labours of successive doctors of the Church had worked
out a detailed scheme of doctrine. This scheme was adopted
by the governing hierarchy of the Church, and so became,
instead of doctrine, dogma sanctioned by authority : and this
dogmatic system met and wrestled with Neo-Platonism and
Epicurism and the other theories of the universe then in
vogue. Not that the conflict was altogether decided by mere
logical fencing. Intensity of belief and nobility of life go for
something even in intellectual contests. But unless Chris-
tianity had presented to the thinking part of mankind a
system of the world and of human life which they felt to be
higher and truer than others, it must have failed to make its
way. For if the emotions are the sails of life, the intellect is
the rudder ; and we know whether sails or rudder in the end
have their way with the ship. Successive generations of
thinkers from Paul to Thomas Aquinas built up a great system
of Christian doctrine, which was for many ages regarded as
satisfactory to the best human intellects.

For man is not a loosely-tied bundle of faculties, but a
compound being with unity of feeling. Religion is more
closely connected with emotion and action than with thought :
yet if we love religion we must think about it. And if we
think about it at all, it is of the utmost importance to think
about it rightly, or at least as rightly as is possible to faculties
so narrowly limited as ours. And if we speak about it we
must speak about it in words, however incomplete or even
misleading be the terms we are compelled to use.

CHArTEE XXVI

CHRISTIANITY AND THE TIIIAsI

There comes sometimes in the lives of individuals a great
crisis, of which the result is that all the rest of their days is
lived on another and a higher level; childhood in purpose and
will is changed for maturity. It was such a change as this
which passed over religion in the days of the early Church.
Though the main principles of religious faith existed before
Christianity, they were suddenly raised by the Founder of that
religion and his immediate disciples on to a new and a higher
level, which they thenceforward more or less maintaiu. All
the great beliefs of the human race were, like the early
disciples themselves, baptized into the name of Christ, and
thereby consecrated to a new and a better life.

In part this was the result of the teaching of Jesus. In
the Sermon on the Mount, in the Parables, in the sayings
reported in our Gospels, we find a body of lore as to the
spiritual life and the relations between man and God, compared
with which all previous teaching on the subject seems poor
and barren. Even the noblest of earlier works in regard to
the higher life, such as the Hebrew Psalms, or the writings of
Plato, seem, when set by the side of the Synoptic discourses,
like the speech of children compared with the utterances of
wise maturity. These discourses are like a mine, and, since
the days of their first utterance, have furnished divine wisdom
to thousands of searchers, and still contain unsounded depths
of treasure for the generations which are to come.

But, as Christendom has from the first been aware, there

326 EXPLORATIO EVANGELIC A

was much more in the personality of Jesus than in his words.
In some fashion which we can but very imperfectly trace, the
life and spirit of the Founder of Christianity passed into his
disciples, raising them to an altogether new level. When he
was taken from them they did not relapse into peasants of
Galilee, but carried on the campaign which ended in the
conquest of the world. In the writings of Paul and the
Fourth Gospel we have religious teaching largely different from
that of Jesus. And yet how superior that teaching is to what
it might have been had the same men written a century
earlier : how utterly different and how incredibly superior. The
thoughts and the feelings which the Founder of Christianity
had brought into the world went on developing at the new
level. The life which began with the Christian era went on
uninterrupted, and has gone on to this day in all Christian
countries.

We are told that " Jesus himself baptized not, but his
disciples." As the reception of Jews and Pagans into the
Christian fold was the work of the first disciples, so it fell to
those disciples to Christianise the religious feelings and ex-
periences of the Jewish and the Pagan world. With systems
of doctrine the Master did not concern himself. He was
contented with reflecting on to earth the light of heaven. But
doctrine became the very near concern of the Christian Church.
And in the formulation of it the great thinkers of early
Christianity necessarily and naturally started from the point
which the world had reached when it was overwhelmed by the
flood of rising Christianity.

In the highest sense of the word the originality of
Christianity is so great that it can scarcely be exaggerated.
Whatever it adopted it transformed, as the growing plant
transforms the nutriment which it gathers from the soil. But
it is not doing true service either to history or to Christianity
to represent the religion of Christ as coming down complete
and formed from heaven, and having no antecedents on earth.
In truth few either of the practices or the teachings of the
early Church were altogether peculiar to it. As the life of
the greatest of men may lie seen on reasonable consideration
to be after all a continuation under new conditions of the life

CHRISTIANITY AND THE THIASI 327

of his ancestors, so it is eveo with the greatest of religions.
Doctrine and practice, art and organisation, all take their rise
out of materials and conditions actually existing.

It is, of course, the acceptance of evolutionary views in
ince and history which has made us in the present day
more fully alive to such truths as these. If for a moment it
pains us to find that the religion which is so close to our
hearts may be regarded as a link in the chain of history, as a
derived species and not wholly a special creation, we must
Lain to set aside the feeling. We must learn in this as in

r fields to distinguish between the question of origin and
the question of divine suitability to life. Each of us, and all
those whom we most admire, have risen, biologically speaking,
out of embryos. Yet we have will and affection and spiritual
consciousness. So in biological fashion we can trace the rise

hiistianitv, without for a moment doubting its divinity, or

laim on our hearts and lives.

The reason why the religion of Christ seems to spring out
of the blank lies in the imperfect character of our historical
education. To educated people in general the Jewish writings
of the Kingdoms and the Captivity, and even of the Maccabsean
revolt, are familiar. But the works of the Alexandrian and
Palestinian writers of the age preceding Philo are quite un-
familiar. The state of earlier Israel and Judah, as reflected in
the historical bonks of the Old Testament, is known. But the
state of Palestine at the beginning of the Christian era, apart
from the Xew Testament history itself, is almost unknown.1
In the same way, the Hellas of Pericles and Demosthenes is
studied by most of those who pretend to education; but the
Greater Greece of the age which followed Alexander the Great
is an almost unstudied phenomenon. The writers of the
Hellenistic age were incomparably inferior in calibre to
Thucydides and Sophocles and Plato, and their works have for
the most part perished, so that we realise but very faintly how
different Greece and Asia were at the Christian era from what
they were in the great age of Hellas. Yet it is quite clear
that unless we can realise not only with the intellect but even

1 Admirable worka on this Bubject are Scbttrer'a Jt wish Peoph in the Time of
Chi v. and Hausrath's New Testament Times, both now translated.

328 EX PL OR A TIO E VA NGELICA

in some degree with the imagination what the contemporaries
of Jesus in Judaea and of Paul in Asia Minor were like, we
shall always totally misjudge the facts of the Christian
origins.

No doubt the writings of the New Testament themselves
ought in this matter to be of the greatest value. They are
contemporary or nearly contemporary documents full of vivid
pictures of life and manners. But they have been so long
used by preachers as an authority for doctrine, and twisted so
completely to ethical ends, that men read them with a veil
over their minds, and project all that they depict into a non-
natural sphere.1

The actual discourses and parables of Jesus belong to the
general class of Jewish Eabbinical lore. It is true that they
seem to belong not to one country or time, but to all. But the
ideas they embody are comparatively little mixed with Greek
elements. As regards the calling of the nation, the nature of
demoniacal possession, and other matters, Jesus seems fully
to have shared the views of the Jews who surrounded him.
Beneath the superficial crust of these opinions he penetrated,
as no one else has ever penetrated, to the facts of the spiritual
life.

If, however, we consider the surroundings, even of the
earliest Christianity, we shall find that they were by no means
exclusively Jewish. The kings of the Herodian dynasty were
much like ordinary Hellenistic princes, and introduced many
foreign ways. Tiberias, built by Antipas on the shores of the
Galilean lake, was in appearance and ways a Gneco-Koman
city. The Greek language was spoken by all educated people.
The coinage which passed from hand to hand was Roman and
Greek. Many strict Jews, including even an uncle of Jesus,
Cleopas, had Greek names. And to pass from the external to
the internal, the Jewish writings of the beginning of the
Christian era show an immense amount of Greek influence.
Philo in particular is as deeply indebted to Plato as to the
Pentateuch. He is half a Greek philosopher ; and none of the
fixed ideas of the Jewish race presents itself to his mind un-

1 A good corrective to this state of mind will be found in some of the works
of Prof. W, M. Ramsay.

CHRISTIANITY AND THE Til I AS I 329

modified by Greek way- of thought. Nor waa the influence
of Greek philosophy confined to the Jews of the great cities ol
Aaia and Africa, in which there dwelt flourishing Jewish
communities. Eveu the Jewish Rabbis of Judaea were by
do means impervious to the teachings of Hellas. Gamaliel,
the teacher of St. Paul, was one of those who approved the
reading of Greek philosophy. Antigonus of Socho incurred
from Borne of his contemporaries the accusation of heresy
he taught that man should not serve God for reward :
a notion which he seems to have borrowed from the Greek

ools. Josephus even speaks of the Pharisees as Stoics;
and though no doubt this expression is incorrect, it would be
bold to say that Stoicism had no influence on the Pharisees.
The Sanhedrim, the focus of Jewish energy and religion, took
its name from the Greek word avviSpiov.1

Many such indications as these show that even the
Jerusalem of the first century, and the strict sect of the

risees, were not by any means uninfluenced by Greek ways
of thought. It is probable that we are in this matter misled
by the prejudices of more modern Jews. After the age of
Jesus, partly in consequence of the mad attempt of the
Emperor <'aius to introduce his own worship at Jerusalem, and
still more after the taking of Jerusalem by Titus, there was
among the Pharisees a fierce reaction against all western ways.
Their fanaticism grew narrower and more bitter. In the days
of Augustus and Tiberius a far more tolerant spirit had
prevailed. The Herodians and the Sadducees were by no
means impervious to the influences of Hellenism ; and even
the Pharisees did not cherish that bitter hatred for all that
was Greek or Roman which we find among them after
Christianity had absorbed that part of the nation which was
capable of wider view- and profounder charity. It is certain
that even the Synoptic discourses do not spring up in a purely
Jewish soil. Put the Johannine discourses are thoroughly
permeated by the spirit of Greek or Judao-Greek thought.

A\ 'lien we pass from the words uttered by the Founder
of Christianity to those of his immediate followers, we find the

1 A masterly summary of this matter may be found in Schiirer'a work, already

cited.

33o EXPLORATIO EVANGELICA

influence of Hellas far more clear and strong. The shoot of
the Christian faith had scarcely risen above the ground before
the destruction of Jerusalem in a.d. 70 forcibly removed it to
the richer soil of Hellenism, where soon, from a mere seedling,
it became a mighty tree, overshadowing the earth.

In an admirable work l Mr. Hatch has shown to what
large extent the outward organisation of the early Church was
founded upon the existing constitution of civil and religious
bodies in later Greece and Asia Minor. In another work 2 the
same writer has entered in a tentative way on a larger field,
the debt of Christian doctrine to Hellenism. With enormous
power of assimilation and renovation, the Christian Church
conquered and absorbed all that in the surrounding world of
Hellenism could be put to a Christian use, and made the
vehicle of a Christian tendency. Organisation, festivals, art,
customs, doctrine : all were accepted and all were Christianised.
As Justin Martyr has observed in his noble Apology for
Christianity, all that was good in the deeds of Heathendom
belonged of right to Christianity.

The victorious course of Christianity brought it at once
into contact with the ideas and the institutions of the Greek
world. Even St. Paul, though a Pharisee, was brought up at
Tarsus, a flourishing city, where his restless and receptive
nature could not fail to acquire the intellectual customs then
current in the whole civilised world. The Stoics had a school
at Tarsus, and certainly influenced the thought of the Apostle.
But as to the influence on early Christian doctrine of Greek
philosophy we shall have more to say presently. At present
I wish to dwell briefly on influences more strictly religious in
character, which affected less the leaders who formed the creeds
of the Church than the multitudes who thronged into it.

The <»ld civic and national religion of Greece had been
since the time of Alexander in a decaying state. By the force
of conservatism and by the splendour of its ceremonial, it still
held its own in the cities of old Greece, and it even made ;i

1 "The Organisation of the Early Christian Churches ; " Bampton Lectu/res,
1880. See ahoye, Ohap. XXIII.

'-' "The Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages upon the Christian Ohuroh ;"
Eibberi Lectures, 1888.

CHRISTIANITY AND THE THIASI y>\

Lodgment in the new Hellenistic cities of Asia But it hex! no
expansive force, and small power of resistance when seriously
attacked. It was uot purely Hellenic religion which anywhere
opposed with Buccess the growing power of Christianity. And
it was not purely Hellenic religion which anywhere held the
masses of the people, or satisfied the religious needs of those
who had a craving for spiritual things. The most powerful
religious forces of Paganism were wielded by the priests and
the societies who worshipped deities borrowed from the East,
whose cultus, full of orgy and of enthusiasm, conquered by
degrees all parts of the Hellenistic and Roman world. The
really potent spiritual powers, of Hellenism were those of
Sarapis and [sis, Sabazius and Mithras. The mysteries of
Eleusis were -till powerful; but by their side stood other
mysteries, Orphic, Isiac, and Mithraic, which, like them, pro-
udly guaranteed to all votaries protection and purityin tin-
present life, and a happy immortality beyond the grave.

To the orgiastic cults of later Greece1 Christian writers
have seldom been fair. There was in them a mixture of the
sensual and spiritual which is repellent. They were deeply
stained not merely with imposture and greed of money, hut
even with obscenity. It requires some courage to search in
so distasteful a field for parallels to much that is deepest
and best in Christianity. Yet such search is necessary, and
in making it we must remember that we have no impartial
account of the later Greek enthusiasms. The heathen writers
who paint them in dark colours paint early Christianity with
the same brush. Had Christianity not triumphed it would
have appeared to the historian as a kindred religion to those
of Isis and Mithras; and since it lias triumphed its kinship
with them has been unduly obscured.

In the centuries which immediately preceded and followed
the Christian era, all the great religions of the world, which
had shown signs of decay, renewed their force and sent forth
new and vigorous -hoots. In India, where Brahmanism had
been stagnant, its new offshoot^ the faith of Gautama, spread
wide and became the dominant force. Buddhist missionaries
travelled north, east, and west from the Cabul valley; and
As to these see Foucart, A : les G

EX PL OR A TIO E I rA XGELICA

some writers are even disposed to think that the sphere of
their influence reached the Mediterranean. In Egypt the old
faith of the country gave way in places to an eclectic religion
more suited to the notions of the Greek conquerors. Sarapis,
the ruler of the unseen world, took the place of Osiris ; and
Isis became a goddess of hidden rites and esoteric lore. In
Asia Minor the religion of Cybele, which had long been power-
ful, grew more so, conquered the Galatian invaders, and spread
its influence through Greece and Italy. The wailing for
Adonis, the god who was yearly slain and yearly renewed his
youth, was heard at Alexandria and Antioch. In Greece the
Eleusinian cultus of Demeter and her daughter gradually
changed its character, and became more and more of a national
institution.

Two religions have special claims on our attention : those
of Sabazius and of Mithras. At all times the religion of
Dionysus had been of great importance at Athens, giving
occasion to numerous festivals, in connexion with some of
which we trace the beginnings of the dramatic art, and spread-
ing a cheerful aspect over the daily life of the people. In
the ordinary worship of Dionysus there was little of reflection
or of mystery ; it was in harmony with the joyous life of
nature, and provocative of social intercourse and jollity. But
there was another form of the worship of Dionysus, imported
originally from Thrace or Phrygia, which had a less cheerful
aspect, but more meaning for the history of religion. The
chthonic Dionysus, Sabazius, was, like Sarapis, god of the
world below, and of gloomy and forbidding aspect. The
mysteries celebrated in his honour commemorated his birth,
his death at the hands of the Titans, and his renewed life : ;i
pledge that his votaries also should arise from the dead. The
writings which went under tin.' name of Orpheus, and dealt
with the nature of the gods, the beginnings of the world, the
destinies of the soul, were connected with this worship of
Sabazius, Orpheus passing as the great priest of Dionysus ami
the organiser of his cult. It i- very difficult to distinguish
between the mysteries of Dionysus and those of Demeter and
other Greek deities. Orphism in later Greece affected the
rites at Eleusis. But we know from the writings of Clemenl

CHRISTIANITY AND THE THIAS1 333

of Alexandria that a great Bpace ld the religion of later Greece
was taken by Orphic mysteries, which had been at a far earlier

time not without influent q the philosophy of Plato. The

most interesting point about the Dionysiac religion was its
possession of something like a scheme of doctrine embodied in
a Bacred literature, but small remnant- of which have come
down to us.

The religion of Mithras had its origin anions the Zoroas-
trians of Persia. By some revolution of which we have no
historic record, the sun-god Mithras acquired a pre-eminent
place in the Persian pantheon, eclipsing the more majestic
and inaccessible Ahuramazda. Strain* says of the Persians,
■■ Mithras is their one deity," which proves how completely in
the Augustan age this deity occupied the forefront of the
religion of light. Mithras was the deity of the pirates of
Cilicia in the first century B.C. ; and when Pompeius overcame
and dispersed the robber band the cult of their deity spread
into the Eoinan Empire. At first it made way but slowly;
mine of the inscriptions belonging to it are of an earlier age
than the first century A.D., and it did not attain its full
dominion for two centuries more, when, as the religion specially
favoured by the Roman army, it spread to all the frontiers of
the Empire. "We know more of the rites and organisation of
the Mithraic religion than of its tenets. It became the most
formidable rival of Christianity, and had Julian succeeded in
cheeking the spread uf the Christian faith, that of Mithras
might have taken its place.

These various cults which were flourishing when Chris-
tianity arose had many points in common : in fact they con-
stitute a genus by themselves. And they seem to have had
little jealousy one of another, so that beliefs and votaries
passed easily from >>ne to the other. And although our know-
ledge of them is far from complete, some assertions in regard
to them are justified. It is necessary to select some one
designation fur them; so I will here call them the thiasi.
The thiasus was a society devoted to the worship of some
special deity, and the most notable feature of these late cults
was that they were the property of small organised societies.

It was of the essence of the thiasi that they appealed to

334 EXPLORATIO EVANGELIC A

men separately and not in the mass. The deities of Greece
and Rome had been deities of states, of cities, or of families ;
they had been political institutions or family patrons. But
the thiasi appealed to the religious feelings and spiritual needs
of individuals. And all were accepted by them ; slaves and
free, men and women, and even children, were to be found in
their assemblies. Frequently women exercised in them a
preponderant influence. Their headship belonged not to any
hereditary officer, the representative of a family or a clan,
but to whosoever could satisfy the demands of his fellows
and could dominate them by superior intellect or piety. They
were voluntary associations with institutions and an organisa-
tion developed out of their needs and desires.

Another general feature was their secrecy. Believing
themselves to be under the protection of a presiding deity and
in possession of valuable spiritual privileges, the members of
the thiasi had no need or wish to appear publicly. Their
recruits came to them privately one by one, and before being-
admitted to full privileges of membership had to pass through
some probation and to submit to ordeals. To all the thiasi
were attached mysteries : some solemn celebrations to which
only fully qualified members were admitted, and which were
highly valued as a pledge of certain privileges and hopes.
Only by passing through the mysteries was the relation be-
tween votary and deity made definite and objective, and the
protection of the god assured in life and in death.

The object of the mysteries seems to have been in all
cases the establishment of a close relation between worshipper
and deity. But the manner in which this relation was formed
naturally varied. In some cases it was by a sacrifice of
communion, such as we shall speak of in a future chapter.
By eating and drinking the worshipper came near to his
divinity. Thus at Eleusis the drink called the tcv/cecov was
partaken of by all : in the Mithraie celebrations sacred food
and drink was received by those present. In some cases the
I hief feature of the mysteries was ;i .sacred representation, in
which the sufferings and triumph of the deity were set forth.
Eleusis celebrates, says Clement of Alexandria, by the light
of torches, the abduction of Persephone, the wandering journeys

CHRISTIANITY AND THE T///ASI 335

and the grief of Demeter. In imitation of Demeter the

votaries fasti'il, sat nil the "joyle88 lock," wandered od the

shore; and like her they rejoiced when the Underworld gave
up again her daughter, escaped from her grim lord Hades.
In the I )i<inysiac mysteries the death and the resurrection of
the young deity were celebrated by the worshippers; and

similar representations took place in the mysteries of Isis and
of Cybele. By these and other means it was supposed that it
was made possible for the worshipper to enter into the life
and passion of the deity, and for the deity to come near to
the worshipper.

Sometimes this relationship to the deity became so close
that the worshipper was, as it were, absorbed into the worshipped
The identification of the ministering priest with hid deity
continually meets us in ancient religious cvac. In the thiasi,
the official priest being less impoifcant, this close relation to
the deity became possible to alA worshippers. And there was
another point in which the. thiasi marked an advance upon the
state-cults of Greece. The deity of the thiasus was regarded
as to be identified w*th almost any divine being. iEsculapius,
Sarapis, Mithras, were not strangers who stood outside the
Pantheon demanding admittance, but they were Zeus, Apollo,
Helios, any a*id every power of nature and the unseen world.
The thiasi w.ere henotheistic in regarding their own patron as
supreme in all the provinces of the divine ; and henotheism
leads on very naturally to monotheism. Thus though gross
superstition held the mass of the worshippers, yet the few
con'id find in the ideas of the thiasi the means of rising to the
higher spheres of personal spirituality.

Doctrine in any regular and elaborate form was certainly
not taught in the mysteries, the object of which was rather to
produce a certain frame of mind and a certain disposition of
heart than to teach spiritual truths. But there can be no
doubt that in a less formal way various religious beliefs were
inculcated, especially the necessity of purity, first ritual and
then moral, in all those who would come into the divine
presence, and the existence of a future life in which punish-
ment and reward would be meted out to men in accord with
their past doings.

3}6 EXPLORATIO EVANGELIC A

When the participants in any of the Pagan mysteries tried

to express in a word the benefit they looked for from their

initiation, they sometimes used the word acorrjpia, salvation.

Not unfairly the thiasi might be termed the salvation armies

of antiquity. " The surest and most important fact," writes

Dr. Anrich,1 " in regard to the mysteries is this, that the end

and aim of their celebration was the attainment of cr(orr)pia

guaranteed to the initiated. This consisted, in the first and

most important place, in a blessed immortality hereafter ; in

the second place, in a new life on earth in the society and

under the protection of the deity worshipped." " Les mysteres

de Mithra," writes M. Gasquet,2 " comme en general tous les

n mysteres de l'antiquite, avaient pour objet d'expliquer aux

de la mor£°<ilens ^e ^a Yie Pr^sente, de calmer les apprehensions

par la purification durfkJ^me sur sa destined d'outre-tombe, et

generation et du cycle des^ de l'affranohir de la fatalite de la

liberation s'opere par Tentremise^istences expiatoires. Cette

sauveur, qui lui meme a passe par Y<$P* dieu psychopompe et

et traverse l'eclipse d'une mort passagere jeuve, subi une imssion

triomphant." Much of this is expressed iffour revivre jeune et

come down to us in Firmicus Maternus, and two verses which

to one or other of the Pagan mysteries, " Be comrwhich belonged

since your god is saved, you too shall be saved ported, mystse :

pains." It is not strange that the writer who presei'om all your

this distich should add " Habet ergo diabolus christierves for us

where of course by diabolus he means the spirit of PagSS suos " ;

The renewal of the life of individual or clan by a soi\jism.
service, in which a fresh union between the deity and the in mi
dividual or clan was brought about, was one of the most prinii- _
tive and essential parts of early religion. We shall speak of it
in more detail in the chapter on Saerijicr «n<l Christ iiiaih/. It -
was frequently spoken of in the Pagan mysteries as a new birth,
especially in the Taurobolium, which properly belonged to the
religion of Cybele, but which seems to have become a pari of

1 T)as a/nMke Mysteriervwesen inseinem Einfiun avf dcu Ch/ristentim, 1894, p.

17. This is a very i lerate and useful summary, though tiol specially Btriking

or original.

- /•;.;.</ .//, A culte ei readi Mith/ra, 1899, p. 15.

CHRISTIANITY AND THE THIAS1 337

the cull of Mithras also. The votary was in this ceremony
Bprinkled with the blood of a slain ox, and was thereby, aa it
is expressed in extant inscriptions, " renatus," or " renatus in
aeternum." Of course salvation and the new birth « I i « I not
attain in the Pagan mysteries more than a small part, an
adumbration, of the meaning those phrases were to attain in
developed Christianity. They only furnished the bodywherein
the soul was to dwell. They only provided organs which were
destined for functions as yet undeveloped.

There is a loathsome side to the religion of the thiasi.
Belonging in a marked degree to the less educated and refined
ses of the people, they were in the way of pollution by
materialism, imposture, and vulgarity. M. Foucart, who has
a great dislike of the thiasi, writes,1 " lis ne manquaient pas
d'attribuer aux purifications et aux autres pratiques mat^rielles
une valeuT independante des dispositions morales; ils avaient
des secrets pour forcer la volonte des dienx." The Roman
satirists reckoned the thiasi among the causes which were
producing the corruption of the Empire. But many of the
most beneficial revolutions which have taken place in human
a Hairs have had their origin in a foul soil. New ideas, when
they dawn on the world, often appear in places which
respectability sedulously avoids.

That Christianity should be influenced, not directly by the
11 thiasi, but by the ideas which dominated them, will
Beem more natural if we remember that these ideas had at
the beginning of the Christian era largely influenced a Jewish
sect, the Essenes. It appears from the account which Josephus 2
gives of the Essenes, that in many respects these strange people
were dominated by the same views which marked the Pagan
Mysteries. Their views as to the future life were like those of
the Orphists : they were dominated by the desire of purity,
ceremonial and other ; they practised baptism. And they
seem to have come perilously near to Paganism in their
adoration of the rising sun. The question has often been
raised whether the teaching of Jesus contains Essene elements.
This question is not easily answered : but it would seem to be

1 Ass chex lea Grccs, p. 186.

2 B. J. ii. 8.

338 EXPLORATIO EVANGELICA

more likely that Essenism influenced the Church after the
Crucifixion through the mental and moral habits which the
Essenes had spread among the Jews of Palestine.

It is certain that early Christianity shows remarkable
analogies both to the ideas and to the language of the Pagan
thiasi. It is not to be supposed that the Christian leaders
would deliberately borrow either rites or language from cults
which they regarded as of diabolic origin. But the spirit of
the age worked in the Church as in the thiasi, producing
developments parallel, however widely different in value. And
when the Christian Fathers came to speak and write of their
own mysteries they were compelled to use the only language
available, that of the thiasi. " Our survey shows," writes
Anrich,1 " how the most general and most important parts of
the terminology of the mysteries passed into the language of
the Church. We need not look for any intentional or
calculated adoption ; for at all times the Church had the
utmost horror of heathen mysteries. Rather the fact that the
ceremonies of the Church were regarded as mysteries, led,
naturally, to an unintentional adoption of terms suitable to
that way of regarding them which had been moulded by a
practice of centuries, and had become a settled part of the
Greek language."

And what is true of language is true also of ideas and of
rites. " The great benefits which men hoped to secure by
initiation in the mysteries were: first, purification and cleanness,
then a blessed immortality hereafter. In the same way the
benefits of the Christian mysteries may be summed up in the
words purification and immortality." a The ceremonies of the
early Church, also, were not invented, but naturally and in-
evitably taken from existing custom, just as much as the
external form of the Christian societies.

When we have realised these facts we cease to be astonished
that superficial Pagan observers found a strong likeness
between the thiasi and the Christian societies. Apart from
intentional copying, institutions adapted to the same human
needs, and arising amid the same surroundings, must have

1 Op. cil. p, 163.
2 K&Oapcns ami dOavaala. Anrich, p, 17!'.

CHRISTIANITY AND Till-: THIAS1 339

borne ;i superficial Likeness to one another. In particular, the
Mithraic cult, which grew up beside Christianity in the
provinces of the Roman Empire, resembled it in many

mala M. Oumont, the most recent and most Learned
writer on Mithras, writes as follows:1 "Like the Christian-,
tlic followers of Mithras Lived in closely united societies, call-
in- 1 >no another father and brother; like the Christians, they
practised baptism, communion, and confirmation, taught an
authoritative morality, preached continence, chastity, self-
denial, and self-control ; like the Christians, they spoke of a
deluge, and believed in the immortality of the soul and the
resurrection of the dead; in a heaven for the blessed and a
hell which was the abode of evil spirits." The only part of
the Mithraic cult which Christianity seems to have intention-
ally borrowed is Christmas clay, the winter solstice, or festival
of the birth of the new sun. But probably the two religions,
growing side by side, influenced one another in an unconscious
way in many matters.

We are, however, in danger of passing outside the narrow
limits prescribed to this work. We must return from these
more general views to consider more definitely whether the
working of the ideas preserved and embodied in the Pagan
mysteries can be traced in the Christianity of the Apostolic
Age, as well as in the later growth of the Church. Most
writers would allow that in the third and fourth centuries the
development of Christianity was in some degree influenced by
the religion of the thiasi But can this be proved for the
first century of Christian history ? And we must at once
allow that Pagan religious ideas influenced the Gnostics more
rapidly and more deeply than they did the more orthodox
Christians. The Gnostics, a3 Prof. Harnack has well shown,
represent a premature Hellenisation of Christianity ; they ac-
cepted too early, and therefore too crudely, ideas destined in
time to have great influence in the Church. But apart from
the Gnostic sects, the main ideas of the thiasi were certainly
built into the very foundations of the Church.

Like the thiasi the Christian missionaries called men to
their fold not by cities nor by families, but as individuals, " the
1 Roscher's Lezikon, ii. p. 3066.

34o EXPLORATIO EVANGELICA

one taken and the other left." Like the thiasi they called on
their disciples to come out from among their fellows, to practise
a more austere morality, to pursue new paths of conduct.
Like the thiasi, the Christian society placed a new spiritual
bond between disciple and disciple as a more sacred tie than
those of mere secular society. Like the thiasi, early Christianity
levelled ranks and sexes. In the thiasi many of the most
influential members were slaves and women. We think
naturally of the names of Onesimus, Aquila, Priscilla, Lydia,
Damaris, and others, who gave great help to the Christian
missionaries. And not only in social working, but in doctrine
also we find in the course of the first century a close parallelism
between the thiasi and the churches.

The great difference between the teaching of the Synoptic
Jesus on the one hand, and the teaching of Paul, of the Fourth
Evangelist, and of the author of Hebrews on the other, is just
that the latter is permeated, as the former is not, by the ideas
of spiritual communion, of salvation, of justification, and media-
tion : ideas which had found an utterance, however imperfect,
in the teaching of the thiasi. The Fourth Gospel dwells on
the need of the second birth, on the way in which the disciple
abides in his Master, on the divine light which shines amid
earthly darkness. Paal speaks of Christ as the head of the
Church, of justification by faith, of bearing about in the body
the dying of Jesus, of the flesh that wars against the spirit.
The author of Hebrews calls Christ the Mediator and Great
High Priest, the Saviour of men, and their representative before
God. Christians are, like the Pagan Mystse, called upon to be
ocrioi and ayioi. And in the second Corinthian Epistle Paul
speaks of the Eucharist in a manner which shows that already
in the churches which he had founded it had taken the mystic
and sacramental position which it has never since lost.

It would be misleading to speak of this change, the general
nature of which is indisputable, as due to the direct influence
of the Pagan thiasi. My contention is quite different I
maintain that the language of the Pauline and Johannine
writings shows the translation of Christianity on to a new
level by the reception and the baptism info Christ of a set of
ideas which at the time, coming from ;i divine source, were

CHRISTIANITY AND THE THIASJ 341

making their way into the various religions of the human race.
Thcs,' ideas, when passing into such cults as those of Sabazius
and Mithras, transferred them to a higher spiritual sphere, raised

their tour ami fitted them to a better life. These ideas, passing
into early Christianity, could not indeed raise its tone, but more
fully adapted it for human reception, prevented it from remain-
ing too pure and spiritual for ordinary men to live by, made it
a continuation of the spiritual life of mankind rather than a
sudden break in that life. Matthew Arnold may call the
growth of doctrine in the Church " Aberglaube reinvading."
I should prefer to liken the spiritual life of mankind in the
first century to that of a man to whom has been revealed a
heavenly vision, but who finds, on coming to himself, that he
must still pursue the path of his former life, but with every
step made clearer and brighter by the memory of what has
been revealed to him.

Of course the contrast between Christianity and the thiasi
becomes only the more clear the longer one dwells on their
resemblances. If Osiris and Dionysus had died and risen
again, the story of their resurrection was embodied in tales
handed down from a barbarous age, uncouth and hideous, and
little fitted to embody higher spiritual truth. If Mithras, the
sun-god, was the image of the Creator, the Saviour and
Mediator, Mithraism had no divine life lived on earth to set
;i- a pattern before the eyes of the Mystre. The sun is the
noblest feature in nature, and in many religions the solar cult
has been the vehicle of a higher morality than that current.
But when the Jesus Christ of the Gospels and Epistles was
set before men, it seems to modern eyes very strange that any
should have preferred to seek salvation by humanising the
powers of nature, rather than by accepting a perfect type of
humanity which stood ready. The explanation of the strange
f;nt is best found in a study of the writings of the Emperor
Julian.1

The religion of the Pagan masses lived on, though in

ilv improved form, into Christianity. And the religion of

the Greek philosophers lived on, as we shall see in the next

chapter. What did not live on into Christianity, unhappily,

1 See Julian the Philosopher, by Alice Gardner, pp. 184, etc.

342 EXPL0RAT10 EVANGELICA

was the best elements of the Hellenic religion, the nobler
doctrines of cults like those of Apollo and Athena. When
Christianity arose they had already suffered eclipse. Thus the
divine nobleness of moderation and order, the charm of the
mens sana in corpore sano, the beauty of a perfectly pro-
portioned character, of manliness and a noble ambition, perfect
freedom in thought and aspiration, in fact the whole range
of higher Hellenic religious ideas, were omitted in the web
of Christianity. That such ideas were not wholly lost sight
of in the Middle Ages was certainly not due to those who
spoke authoritatively for Christianity. Since the Renascence
we have been slowly recovering the range of higher Hellenic
ideas from poem and drama, from orator and historian, from
temple and sculpture. These ideas are still mainly the appanage
of the more highly educated classes. They scarcely reach the
masses. And even to the educated they do not seem to have
the same power of appeal which is exercised by such ideas as
were woven into the web of early Christianity. Yet there is
not in the nature of things any reason why the best Hellenic
ideas should not be baptized into Christ. They are, in fact, far
more closely akin to the teaching of Jesus, as given in the
Synoptic Gospels, than many ideas which have been incorporated
into Christianity. It is, however, quite impossible to speak
further on this subject in the present work : I can but mention
it in passing.

I have dwelt with emphasis on the Pagan parallels to
Christian doctrine, because I believe their importance to have
been hitherto generally underestimated. It remains to speak
of those roots of Christian doctrine which were nourished by
Jewish soil ; but on this subject I need not dwell at great
length, since it is adequately treated in many works.

That which makes a strong line of distinction between
other Oriental religious growths and the Christian Church,
besides the special inspiration due to the Founder, is this, that
Christianity lived at a far higher moral level. The religions
of Isis and of Mithras belong to the same genus as Christianity,
but to very inferior species. And Christianity owes much of
its marked superiority to the fact that it inherited the spiritual
traditions of the Jewish race, which had, in antiquity, an un-

CHRISTIANITY AND THE TIIIASI 343

equalled genius for religion. < m two lines we can trace back
Christian excellence to a Jewish source.

Christianity inherited from Judaism a boon of inestimable
value in the writings of the Old Testament. Harnack writes:
•■ Wnatevei sources of comfort ami strength Christianity, even
in its New Testament, lias possessed, or does possess up to the
present, are, for the most part, taken from the Old Testament.
viewed from a Christian standpoint, in virtue of the impression
of the person of Jesus." l Just as the .ancient doctrines of
salvation and mediation had to he baptized into Christ, so had
the writings of the Jewish Bible. But baptism does not put
weak and strong, manly and effeminate, on one level. So the
intrinsic excellence of the Old Testament revelation remained,
under Christianity, as a continued source of power. Faith in
God as the Creator and liuler of the world, and as lord of the
human soul, a strong sense of sin and of the possibility of
forgiveness, a delight in the divine decrees, the blessedness of
union between the divine will and that of man : these and
other such religious ideas are nowhere expressed with so much
force and beauty as in some of the writings of the Jewish
Scriptures. And these Scriptures the Christians made
thoroughly their own, only by degrees placing on a level with
them even the records of the life of the Master and the
Epistles of his Apostles.

It has been observed by theologians that it was this
adherence of the Church to the Jewish Scriptures which saved
it from such extravagances as marked the systems of the
Gnostics, and the antinomianism which naturally arose from
the exaggeration of Pauline tendencies. They furnished the
Bhip of Christianity with ballast; they provided a standard of
appeal by which new enthusiasms and developing tendencies
might be tried and corrected. Marcion, for example, a
thoroughly spiritual man and a great religious leader, through
his rejection of the Old Testament was led into such aberra-
tions as the belief in two deities, whereof one was the Creator
of the world and the Deity of the Jews; the other was the
good God of love revealed to the world by Jesus Christ, who
saved men from the stern rule of the Creator, and gave them
1 Dogmengesehichte, i. p. 42. Trans, i. 42.

344 EXPLORATIO EVAXGELICA

new and spiritual life. Against such views as these the best
preservative for Christianity existed in the works of the
Prophets and the Psalmists.

Perhaps, however, it is better to speak of the Old Testa-
ment as a test and regulator of doctrine than as a source of
it. For very little doctrine can be extracted from it, unless it
is read in quite a fanciful way, with a pre-arranged system to
which it must conform. We have seen how the early disciples
built out of misinterpreted Scripture a great part of the life of
the Founder. And out of the same materials they enriched
the doctrinal constructions of the age, though the main lines
of those constructions were not properly Jewish.

The construction of doctrine was enormously facilitated,
perhaps in a great degree controlled, by the tendencies which
had, during the centuries preceding the Christian era, driven
the Jews from their native land into the great cities of the
Eastern Mediterranean, and there formed them into strongly
marked communities. It has been well pointed out by recent
historians that the early Christian communities outside
Palestine were almost entirely made up, in the first century, of
these Hellenistic Jews, and the Gentile proselytes whom they
had attracted, and to whom Christianity came in the first
instance as a reformed Judaism. Harnack observes 1 that, un-
less all Christian origins are to be resolved into a gray mist,
we must learn to distinguish between the tendencies which
originated in the Hellenistic communities of Jews, and those
which came from the Greek Gentiles. This is, of course, true ;
yet our knowledge of the Jews of the Diaspora, their writings
and their beliefs, is so limited, that we are often unable to say
whether a Greek idea which affects early Christianity comes
into it through a Jewish medium or direct. At all events, this
is the case after the fall of Jerusalem. So that we are obliged,
however unwillingly, often to abide in the gray mist. Harnack
mentions three definite points wherein we may see the intluence
of the Diaspora on Christianity:8 (1) Its geographical spread
La determined by the existence or non-existence of Jewish
colonies in the several districts. All the Pauline churches

' Dogmengeschichte, i. :">;<. Trans, i. 54.
- Ibid. i. ."> I. Trans, i. 55.

CHRISTIANITY AND THE THIAS1 345

were founded in cities with a large Jewish population; (2)
treatment and interpretation of the Old Testament by
Gentile Christian teachers closely resemble those current
among the Jews of Alexandria; (3) There are early Christian
writings which have an astonishing resemblance to the works
of the Diaspora; in fact, in some eases we are unable to say
whether treatises are of Jewish or Christian origin.

The Gospel, it appears, passed into the Greek and Koniau
world over the bridge offered by the Diaspora. ""We may
gather," writes Harnack,1 " that there was a Judaism in the
Diaspora, to the consciousness of which the cultus and
ceremonial law were of comparatively subordinate importance,
while the monotheistic worship of God, apart from images, the
doctrine of virtue, and belief in a future reward beyond the
grave, stood in the foreground as its really essential marks."

It was the cultivation of private and domestic virtues
which kept alive the Jewish colonies in the cosmopolitan
cities of the Levant, just as it preserved the Jews of Europe
during the persecutions of the Middle Ages. By these
virtues were laid the foundations of a healthy moral tone
which Christianity inherited from Judaism, and apart from
which even the sublime morality of the Sermon on the Mount
might have failed to redeem the daily life of the Gentile
converts from the indifference to moral law which always
marked ( iiaco-Iioman society. And with an ardent mono-
theism and a pure moral code the Jews of the Diaspora
brought into Christianity many doctrinal tendencies, which
had naturally arisen from their contact with Hellenic thought.
teschichte, i. 103. Trans, i. 107.

CHAPTER XXYII

THE INFLUENCE OF PHILOSOPHY

It is impossible fruitfully to consider the nature of Christian
doctrine, until we have first analysed the intellectual con-
ditions amid which it arose. If that doctrine is objectively
true and imparted from above to men without any regard to
their intellectual faculties and mental habits, well and good.
But if, as every educated person now thinks, there is a
considerable human element in all doctrine, and the light of
the idea shines through an earthly setting, then it is of the
utmost importance to study the human conditions which lay
around the cradle of the faith. Our knowledge of human
nature, of literature, and of history, should enable us, at least in
some degree, to determine beforehand the form which early
Christian doctrine was sure to take. Just as a skilled
philologist could tell us what forms primitive Teutonic words
take in this or that modern Teutonic language, so a skilled
historian should be able to tell us what tendencies would
control the shaping of doctrine in the early Church.

The pure light of heavenly inspiration does not fall upon
blank minds, but upon faculties highly coloured by nature and
training. We readily Bee that <>ne side of Christianity makes
more impression on the authors of the Logia, another on the
Fourth Evangelist, another on Paul, another on Justin. But
we less readily perceive what is quite as certain and as
important, that there were also tendencies and prejudices
which belonged not to individuals, but to the times. Those
who wrote in the lirst and second centuries must needs write

THE INFLUENCE OF PHILOSOPHY 347

in the style of the times, and with the Literary habits of the

times. Thnse who thought then must think on the lines of*
educated intellectual habit It' we read the early Christian
writers, and take their words undiacounted, as we should
take the word of a neighbour or friend, we shall be very far
from understanding them. All this is perfectly obvious and
commonplace, yel few theologians or historians have been
aide to keep it always before them in their writings.

In the present work we deal only with the early stages of
the development of doctrine. It originated in Asia Minor
principally, and was concerned with the person of the Founder
of Christianity. Somewhat later, speculative Christology was
supplemented or superseded by Soteriology, the doctrine of
man's salvation, which largely arose in Rome and the West.
The dominant influence in the minds of the earliest educated
Christians was certainly that of Greek philosophy. With the
rise of the Roman primacy, the language and the ideas of
Roman law have increased influence on doctrine.

At the beginning of the Christian era the mind of every
educated man was formed on Greek literature, rhetoric, and
philosophy. This composed then the whole mental atmos-
phere, just as later the revived Aristotelian philosophy formed
the mental atmosphere of the schoolmen. Whoever thought at
all, had to think on this plane. Perhaps the easiest way to bring
this home to one's self is by considering the writings of Cicero
and Aurelius. Cicero was a Roman, not a Greek; a states-
man, not a philosopher; yet Greek philosophy is in the very
air he breathes. The great Emperor Marcus Aurelius was a
Roman of the haughtiest type; yet he, too, must philosophise
in the phrases of the Greek schools, and even write in the

k language. Greek philosophy was in those days all, and
more than all, that science and ethics are now; and Greek
rhetoric was the great means of education to all men of
intellectual ambition.1

Even in the earliest of the Christian writings some
influence of philosophy may be traced. The remarkable
parallel which exists between some of the earliest Christian
documents and the writings of the Roman Stoics, especially

1 Hatch, Hibbcrt Lectures, Lect. ii.

348 EXPLORATIO EVANGELICA

Seneca, has been traced by the masterly hand of Dr. Lightfoot.
He shows 1 that between the Sermon on the Mount and some
of the writings of Seneca there may be traced a remark-
able series of coincidences in thought and expression. " Nor
are these coincidences of thought and imagery confined to the
Sermon on the Mount. If our Lord compares the hypocritical
Pharisees to whited walls, and contrasts the scrupulously clean
outside of the cup and platter with the inward corruption,
Seneca also adopts the same images: 'Within is no good:
if thou shouldest see them, not where they are exposed to
view, but where they are concealed, they are miserable, filthy,
vile, adorned without like their own walls. . . . Then it
appears how much real foulness beneath the surface this
borrowed glitter has concealed. ' If our Lord declares 2 that
the branches must perish unless they abide in the vine, the
language of Seneca presents an eminently instructive parallel :
' As the leaves cannot flourish by themselves, but want a
branch wherein they may grow and whence they may draw
sap, so those precepts wither if they are alone : they need to
be grafted in a sect.' Again, the parables of the sower, of the
mustard-seed, of the debtor forgiven, of the talents placed out
at usury, of the rich fool, have all their echoes in the writings
of the Roman Stoic."

Dr. Lightfoot proceeds to point out further resemblances
between the writings of Seneca and the Epistles of James,
Peter, John, and especially Paul. " The first impression 3 made
by this series of parallels is striking. They seem to show a
general coincidence in the fundamental principles of theology
and the leading maxims in ethics: they exhibit, moreover,
special resemblances in imagery and expression, which, it
would seem, cannot be explained as the result of accident, but
must point to some historical connection." Even after
allowing for the Oriental origin of Stoicism, and other circum-
stances, Dr. Lightfoot is disposed to attribute some value to
the stories which tell of actual intercourse between Seneca
and Paul, though he does not regard the connection of the two

1 Dissertations on the Apostolic Age, p. 264.

- I should regard this compari on a due to the Fourth Evangelist rather than
Bee p. i"'.'. ;i Dissertations on the Apostolic Age, p. 278.

THE IX II. I EM 7:" t )F PHILOSi >/'// ) ' 340

as proven. In my opinion tin- coincidences are only a very
remarkable instance of fche way in which contemporary
authors, working "ii similar lines, fall into the same forms of
thought ami expression. Seneca is not a strikingly original

writer, hut to a large extent dependent on his predecessors.
11.- borrows from the general stock of philosophic views and
ethical ideas. Ami it can scarcely be doubted that the early
Christian writers borrowed from the same stock.

Though we cannot prove a definite connection between
Paul ami Seneca, we can with assurance trace in Paul's
language the influence of the Stoic philosophy which was
dominant at Tarsus. As Dr. Lightfoot observes,1 " St. Paul
found in the ethical language of the Stoics expressions more
fit than he could find elsewhere to describe in certain aspects
the duties and the privileges, the struggles and triumphs, of
the Christian life." "The Stoic expressions, describing the
independence of the individual spirit, the subjugation of the
unruly passions, the universal empire of a triumphant self-
control, the cosmopolitan relations of the wise man, were
quickened into new life, when an unfailing source of strength
and a boundless hope of victory had been revealed in the
Gospel, when all men were proclaimed to be brothers,
and each and every man united with God in Christ."
" It is difficult to estimate, and perhaps not very easy to
overrate, the extent to which Stoic philosophy had leavened
the moral vocabulary of the civilised world at the time of the
Christian era. To take a single instance: the most important
of moral terms, the crowning triumph of ethical nomenclature,
crvveiBrjais, consoientia, the internal, absolute, supreme judge
of individual action, if not struck in the mint of the Stoics, at
all events became current coin through their influence." All
this is the more intelligible when we remember that Zeno, the
founder of Stoicism, was of Semitic race, and that the doctrine
of Stoicism from the first combines Oriental with Greek ethical
ideas. Zeno was in a sense a forerunner of Paul; and the
Stoic teachings of providence, of the goodness of the ideal wise
man, of the depravity of ordinary human beings, all have their
counterpart in early Christian writings.

1 Dissertati ■ Apostolic Aye, p. 287.

35o EXPLORATIO EVANGELIC A

Thus the influence of Greek philosophy on the earliest
Christian writings affects their ethical tone and the language
which they employ. When we consider the rise of doctrine,
which for the most part belongs to a somewhat later time, we
find the influence of philosophy still more potent.

In the early Imperial age, philosophy had naturally under-
gone great changes since the days of Plato and Aristotle.
Those great thinkers had indeed fixed, so far as the ancient
world was concerned, the methods and the language of
philosophy ; but its tone, its objects, and its tendencies hail
greatly changed. The particular lines to be traced in Plato,
which later thought especially pursued, were, first the ethics
of the individual, and second the glimpses of a higher ideal
world which often recur in the Platonic dialogues.

It is known to all students how the predominantly ethical
schools of the Stoics and the Epicureans tended in the later
Greek and the Soman worlds to occupy the foreground, and to
throw into the background schools of philosophy or a more
theoretic cast. The philosophy of the Soman age is also deeply
penetrated by precisely those ideas which we have found to be
the life of the thiasi. Its enquiries are largely directed towards
such questions as fellowship with the divine, the future life,
emancipation from the thraldom of the flesh, purification
of the heart. Writers like Iamblichus and Porphyry
speak of philosophy, just as the thiasi regarded their
mysteries, as a means of salvation, of escaping from the
pollution of the body, and the attainment of a saving know-
ledge. Plato had sometimes spoken of philosophy as if it
were an initiation : in Philo and later writers this manner of
speaking is carried further and taken more literally. To
Philo higher knowledge is a heavenly mystery ; the philosopher
is the hierophant ; and it is only to be attained by the mystse
through his aid. In the later Alexandrian philosophy there
was even a tendency to deny that a vision of the divine could
ever be gained by mere thought: to assert that an extatic
vision alone could bring man into the presence of God.

Thus in many ways the philosophy of later Greece, and
cspiM-jjilly uf Alexandria, might be regarded as a cousin on the
one side of the religion of the thiasi, on the other <>f

THE /NFL C '/■. NCE I '/■' Pin Lost >/>// V 351

Christianity. Some of the Fathers of the Church had been
philosophers, and came into the community with formed
mental habits which they were not likely greatly to change.
They found in the religion of Christ a solution of the
questions which had been busying their minds. Moral needs,
which they had in vain tried to satisfy by philosophic study
and by practice of the Mysteries, found rest in the Church.

And in thus attracting to herself the best heads and the
most enthusiastic hearts of the Fagan world, the Church un-
doubtedly enriched her blood. But few gains in the world
are quite free from loss. And it must be allowed that in thus
admitting the methods and the language of philosophy into
her pale, the Church did not wholly profit. Greek philosophy
has never lost, probably never will lose, its hold on educated
men. What Homer is to the poet, and the Psalms to the
religious man, that Plato and Aristotle are to men of systematic
thought. They are to all time the classical writers in this
sphere. We find a leader of men like the late Dr. Jowett
spending great part of forty years of his life on Plato. The
study of early Greek philosophy is not merely a mental train-
ing, but a feeding of the soul, an enrichment of life, almost a
religion. Yet those who are most devoted to Greek philosophy
would many of them allow that its interest for us is literary and
historical rather than scientific. Aristotle indeed did later, in
the Middle Ages, establish a great intellectual empire. But it
was not Aristotle but Plato who was the great master of
philosophy in late Greek times. Aristotle was indeed then
very imperfectly known. And Plato, though the source of
philosophy, is anything but rigid or methodical. It is not so
much his reasonings which interest us as his literary charm,
the Socratic irony, the glimpses of Athenian surroundings, the
wise remarks on life, the suggestive myths. The Platonic
philosophy, with all its charm, was very ill adapted for
putting religious truth into scientific shape, or into a scheme
likely to survive in a changed intellectual atmosphere.

And as school succeeded school, greater and greater
domination was exercised by the literary and rhetorical element.1
We have already seen what an incubus the rhetorical tendency of

1 Hatch, Hibbcrt Lectures, Lect. iv.

EX PL OR A T10 El rA NGEUCA

the Greek mind was to the Greek historians. It was at least
as fatal to Greek philosophy. It made it unreal : a mesh of
skilfully chosen words rather than an attempt to understand
realities. Just as a growth of ivy will kill a grove of forest
trees, so the parasitic growth of rhetoric overpowered Greek
poetry, Greek art, every growth of the Hellenic spirit.
Rhetoric strangled Greek philosophy, and tried to strangle
Christian doctrine, Christianity, says Mr. Hatch, " came into
the educated world in the simple dress of a Prophet of
Righteousness. It won that world by the stern reality of its
life, by the subtle bonds of its brotherhood, by its divine
message of consolation and of hope. Around it thronged the

of eloquent talkers, who persuaded it to change its dress and

ssimilate its language to their own. It seemed th<
win a speedier and completer victory. But it purchased con-
quest at the price of reality." However regrettable this
corruption may seem to us, it was doubtless necessary at the
time to fit Christianity to its mundane environment. But
necessary or not, the change was one which injuriously ai:
Christianity even in our days.

•k philosophy was not fairly absorbed into Christianity
until the time of Clement of Alexandria, towards the end of
the second century. Clement recognises fully the valui
philosophy as a preparation for Christianity : he I
fulfilling the same function for the Greeks which the Law
fulfilled for the Jews, the function of the pedagogue to bring
them to the school. But before the time of Clement, from
the very origin of Christian doctrine, the working of Plat
philosophy and Greek rhetoric had conditioned rth.

I must, in few words, point but in whal I - the intellec-

tual condition of the Hellenistic world injuriously affected the
formation of doctrine I have already tried to show that it
made objective history almost impossible. It also sowed the
seeds of weakness in doctrine in cone

f the facts of the outer world, and the principles of
human nature.

It was an event of vast importance in the history of the

human mind when 8 and Plato tamed from the

phyj olations of the Ionian school of philosophy to

THE INFLUENCE OF PHILOSOPHY 353

psychology and ethics, Despairing of gaining any satisfactory
knowledge of the fleeting phenomena of the physical world,
they turned their observation inwards, towards the faculties of

man, his conscience and the paths of conduct. The bent thus
given to Greek thought persisted to the end. Aristotle, it
is true, was interested as well in the phenomena of the.
world as in those of human nature. And in the Hellenistic
age of Greece we find, Bide by side with the philosophic

tols of the Stoics, the Epicureans, and Academics, many-
men of science, attached in some cases to the museum of
Alexandria. And in exact science, especially in mathematics,
the Greeks made great progress. Yet the main tendency
of Greek thought was never changed. It always paid most
attention to man. to metaphysics, and to conduct, and placed on
a lower level the knowledge derived from observation and
experiment in the visible world. Thus though the progress
of the later Greeks in orderly knowledge of the world was

t, yet the point of view of their scientists would necessarily
seem, to a modern mind, very primitive. And those who had
the moulding of Christian doctrine were not trained in the
medical or scientific schools, but were mere laymen as regards
scientific knowledge. Hence we need not be surprised that the
tailv chapters of Genesis, which have been such a stumbling-
block to the intelligent artizan of our time, did not disturb the
faith of the early Fathers. And the popular notions as to earth,
aii. ami sky were assumed in some of the early Christian
doctrines, such as that of the descent of the Founder into
Hades, "in the lowest parts of the earth," and his physical
resurrection and ascension in a human body to heaven. In
such cases orthodox theologians see the assertion of stupendous
miracles, whereas the originators of the doctrines were
probably merely intent on stating truths in the ordinary
terms dictated by their views of the universe. If Christ
visited the dead, of course he would ''descend into the
Lower parts of the earth." If he sat down at the right
hand of Cod, it would naturally be in the body, without
which Jews could not conceive personal existence or
continued consciousness as possible. We have recourse to
miracle, to allegory, to a hundred theories to explain what to

23

354 EXPLORATIO EVANGELICA

them needed no explanation, and stood firm by its inherent
reasonableness.

But of far more importance in the rise of doctrine than
any false views of the world, were the current views in
psychology and metaphysics. Greek philosophy somewhat
despised the things of sense, and was far more deeply con-
cerned with things beyond sense, but not as was supposed
beyond reason. The doctrine of the Trinity or of the person
of Christ served just as well for speculative metaphysical
constructions and the practice of intellectual sword-play as
the theory of the summum oonum or of the origin of the
world. It is, however, certain that as the men of science of the
Alexandrian Museum were undeveloped in comparison with
Darwin and Haeckel, so were the philosophers of the later
schools of Greece primitive when compared with Kant and
modern psychologists. We have not, it may be, solved the
problems which Chrysippus and Carneades loved to discuss ;
but we have learned at least approximately the nature of the
limits of human thought. The day of a priori metaphysics is
over. We now have learned that it is not possible by an
analysis of thought and abstract ideas to reach a final and
perfect view of the realities of the universe. All metaphysic
now must be based on a preliminary psychology.

Ancient psychology, which lay at the roots of Greek
philosophy, was thoroughly vitiated by two false views which
ran like rotten threads through the whole of its structure,
rendering it incapable of resisting the strain of developed
criticism.

The first of these is a want of clear discrimination
between what man can know and what he cannot know.
Scepticism was abundantly represented in the philosophic
schools from Pyrrho and Carneades to Sextus Empiricus
But it is obvious that scepticism in an age when science is
unfledged is a perfectly different thing from scepticism as
regards what lies outside the bounds of science. To the
(ireek sceptics cveiything became a matter of doubt. With
us the question is in what sense we can be said to know that
which is to us matter of knowledge, and what is our reason-
able attitude towards that which can never be in the strict

THE INFLUENCE OF PHILOSOPHY 355

sense matter of knowledge Thus there is a gulf between
ancient and modern criticism. Ancienl thinkers had to choose
between complete scepticism and unsound construction. The
doctrine of the relativity of knowledge, which has conquered
the intellectual world, has produced a change iu our way of

rding knowledge parallel to the change which took place in
the the >ry of astronomy when a heliocentric conception of our
Bystem of worlds took the place of the older geocentric concep-
tion. The importance of the suhjective element in all thought
was uot fully realised in an age when meu had not attained to
full st'U'-consciousness. Ami whatever evils may attend a grow-
ing appreciation by man of his own needs and faculties, of
the laws of human nature, yet that appreciation, when once
attained, must he the dominant factor in all future philo-
sophising as to the nature of consciousness, of the world, and
of God. The critical philosophy has made all theorising on
these subjects which was developed in ancient days seem
rather suggestive than conclusive.

Equal weakness is displayed by Greek philosophy when
it treats of the will. The Platonic paradox holds that it is
better to do evil knowingly than unknowingly, because we
have in the first case only ill-doing, but in the second case ill-
doing and ignorance as well. And this paradox does not in
any way stand by itself; it is merely a specimen of the results
of inadequate views as to the nature of the will, and its rela-
tion to good and evil. Aristotle, with his doctrine of virtue
habit, marks a great advance on Plato in this matter.
The Stoics made a still further advance. But perhaps the
best teaching in Greek schools, as regards the will, may be
found in Neo-Platonic writings. "The emphasis," writes
Harnack,1 " which Iamblichus lays on the idea that evil has
its seat in the will, is an important fact ; and in general the
significance which he assigns to the will is perhaps the most
important advance in psychology, and one which could not
fail to have great influence on dogmatics also." The Neo-
Platonic psychology came in time to influence the doctrinal
constructions of Augustine, but not in time to influence the
earlier Christologic doctrine, which does not escape the
1 Dogmcngeschkhte, i. p. 778. Trans, i. 355.

3,6 EXPLO RATIO EVANGELIC A

confusion between knowledge and virtue, which may be said
to be ingrained in Greek speculation. In practice the Christian
Church never swerved from upholding the essentially Jewish
views of the nature of moral good and evil, and the relation
of the human will to the divine. Without that the salt
would indeed have lost its savour, and become lit only for the
dunghill. But false views as to the will have certainly filtered
through Hellenic philosophy into much of Christian doctrinal
construction, especially such doctrine as had a less close
relation to practical life. When great thinkers set themselves
to mould schemes of speculative divinity, they could not escape
the atmosphere of Hellenic speculation, on which they depended
both for good and evil.

To sum up. From the first, Christianity greatly profited
by an infusion of many lofty and noble principles both in
religion and ethics, which had grown up in the schools of
Greek philosophy. And philosophy had for some time been
mowing in the direction which Christianity boldly took. Yet
when the Christian writers came to give their beliefs an in-
tellectual form in doctrine, they were severely limited by the
imperfect views current in the schools as regards the material
world, the nature of knowledge, thought, and will, the value
of abstract thought. And rhetoric in particular, which one
may fairly call the evil genius of Greece, had a constant
tendency to drag doctrine away from the basis of experience,
and to make it depend rather on words than facts.

It would lead us to transgress our limits, if I further
considered the influence of the conceptions and the language
of Roman law upon the rise of Christian doctrine. Already
in the Epistles of Paul we find certain turns of expression,
such as justification, adoption, testament, which belong to Roinun
law; and even the thought is sometimes guided by the rigid
conceptions of that mighty system.1 On Augustine and
Calvin ;iik1 Protestant theology generally, some of the legal
views of Paul have had far-reaching influence. But we do
imt find their discussion important for the creed of the first
and second centuries. It was not until Christianity abandoned

1 Bee W. M. Ramsay, St. Paul (he Traveller and Soman Citizen; E. Hicks,
Oreek Philosophy mi'1 Roman Law ii> the New Testament.

TJfF. INFLUENCE OB PHILOSOPHY 357

Its extreme other-worldliness, and began to take up a more
definite attitude towards the Roman imperial system, thai the
influence of Roman law on Christian thoughl became Btrong.

This brief consideration of the intellectual atmosphere in
which tli<' Christian creed arose is sufficient to show how
entirely it was exposed to imperfections and errors of all
kind-. Undeveloped science, imperfect philosophy, perverted
notions of history, all presided over its formation. It may be
that, had it been the divine will, notwithstanding all these
sources of delusion, a perfectly true creed might have arisen.
Hut Cud i\<>r< not thus work in the world; everywhere he
allows what is best t<> be mingled with inferior and debasing
elements. In none of the processes of nature, and in none of
the pages of history, do we find what would seem to a trained
modern eye anything like a perfect triumph of the better over
the worse. Our experience of the world would therefore lead
us t'> expect that which lias actually come about. In spite of
all misleading forces the Creed contains much noble truth,
fitted to guide and help men during the history of the Church.
But it is not infallible.

It must be observed that our subject is doctrine, not
dogma. Dogma, properly speaking, is doctrine systematised,
and imposed by authority. The Councils and Senates of the
Greek world had long been accustomed, when Christianity
appeared, to pass decrees which they called dogmas. When
the outward organisation of tin- rising Church had been formed,
tin- hierarchy of the Church was no longer willing that doctrine
should circulate in the community in a fluid state. That
hierarchy began to consider itself tin.- best authority as regards
doctrine, and steadily endeavoured to systematise it, and to
impose it upon all Christians on pain of excommunication.
Doctrine bears to dogma the same relation which gold dust
bears to stamped coin. But the history of dogma belongs to
a later age than that with which we deal.

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE CRITICISM OF DOCTRINE

The development of a scheme of Christian doctrine belongs to
a time later than that in which an ideal life of the Founder
was framed, and later than that in which the anticipation of
his second advent was most vividly present to the minds of
Christians. Imagination and expectation had been at work,
and their ardour was subsiding, before the turn of the intellect
was fully come.

Naturally, it is not my intention or hope to write a
history of early Christian doctrine. Such a history has been
written by one of the most learned and scientific of theo-
logians, Dr. Harnack, and is accessible even in English form.
I can only hope to show, in one or two provinces of doctrine,
how, according to my judgment, doctrine arose out of existing
materials ; how the growing organism of Christianity took
possession of existing beliefs and modes of thought, and used
them for its own purposes.

I propose, though in a very slight and tentative fashion, to
approach another task of a far more trying and invidious
character: to examine some doctrines of Christianity not only
in a historic, but also in an analytical fashion, with a view to
ascertaining whether they have lost, with the change in our
intellectual surroundings, their claim upon the Christian
Church, or at least how Ear they require to be stated in novel
form. Such an attempt may well seem bold. Vet such
attempts have in the past been made in every successive
generation of theologians. Ami such attempts must be

THE CRITICISM OF DOCTRINE 359

constantly made aa time passes, unless the faith of Christen-
dom is to become fossilised The notion that Christianity
came into the world as a completed Bystem, not to be taken
from or added to, is absolutely nnhistorical. Christian belief
has, from the first, ever been growing and changing, like every-
thing else which haa vitality. And when christian doctrine

es to be criticised, it will have ceased to be living.

.Many Christiana have the greatest repugnance to speaking
of the person of Christ. They are content with asserting the
divinity of their Lord, and do not wish to enter further into the
matter. And such an attitude of mind may be defended on
the ground that they are only reasserting, in another form, the
facta of their spiritual experience. So long as they abstain
from inferences, and do not harshly judge others who differ
from them in theological views, they occupy a position finite
inexpugnable from the point of view of relative religion. To
their own master let them stand or fall.

But this subjective and defensive attitude has its dis-
advantages, of which we have already spoken.1 When once
doubt has effected an entrance, it collapses immediately and
completely. And in shrinking from discussion men show a
consciousness of weakness. At all events, this attitude of
mind is singularly unlike that of the early Christians. For
centuries after the death of Jesus the most active and
energetic of his followers, apostles, bishops, converts, were
more earnestly occupied in nothing than in discussions as to
the person of the Master and his relation to the God whom
he commonly termed Father. Orthodox and heretics, eastern
and western, educated and unlearned, the early Christians
were for ever trying to make a scheme of doctrine which
Bhould embody the facts of their spiritual experience in the
intellectual language of the age.2 Indeed, any idea which is
of real and vital power cannot remain in the background of
the heart, but must exhibit itself in the field of thought,

1 Above, CL III.
Dean Charon writes, "In the Middle Ages, and much more in the early
times of the Church, there was infinitely more free speculation than seems com-
patible with Church views now. I think it must be we who are wrong. The
nature of tilings seems more in favour of the old way than of ours." — Lift
i, p. 1 15.

36o EXPLORATIO EVANGELICA

court discussion, and claim a place in the front of the
intellectual movement of the time. So we are only following
the example of the names held in highest honour among
Christians if we too approach these serious and solemn
cmestions. And inferiority of endowment in a modern writer,
in comparison with the great doctors of the Church, may well
be, in part, compensated by the more scientific habits of
thought which prevail among us, as an ordinary man with a
telescope can see further than the longest-sighted man without.

Indeed, there is, for modern Christianity, no other source
of right views of the person of the founder except history and
experience. If we turn to Scripture, we find that the writers
of various books of the New Testament held a great variety of
opinions upon the subject. Similar variety is to be traced
in the writings of the early Fathers, and even the decisions
of Councils. An infallible Pope may be a resource, but short
of that we can find no steadfast resting-place. The Creeds can
scarcely be a final authority, when it is the foundations of
the Creeds that we are examining. There seems thus no
alternative but to face the winds and the waves of the stormy
sea of doctrinal reasoning and speculation.

Any attitude towards Christian doctrine is better than the
very common one of pure indifference. The Creed which is
recited in church is, by the mass of the worshippers, left
behind at the church porch. It seems to them like coins
covered with the rust of ages, and no longer current in the
markets of the world, fit only for the collector and the
museum. But even if there be rust on the surface there is
precious metal beneath, and a judicious cleaning may be all
that is necessary to make the coins as fresh as ever.

Christianity as it stands is a fact : the greatest fact within
our experience. Or rather, it is a general name for a mass of
facts. It means that thousands and millions of the human
race, day by day and week by Meek, address prayers to God in
the name of Christ, sing hymns in honour of their Founder,
assemble from time to time to cut bread and drink wine in sign
of allegiance to Christ; build houses for worship, and send
missionaries to instruct the heathen in the doctrines they
themselves accept. It means that the majority of civilised

THE CRITICISM OF DOCTRINE V i

men try, is some degree, to regulate their conduct by a standard
based partly od tradition and partly on the teachings of the
Bible ; that many of them find thereby inward peace and
happiness, and in the strength of it bear death with fortitude.
All these are Eacts which no one run possibly doubt or deny.
The only question is what is implied in these facts. But the
facts themselves are above dispute, and ran be explained away
by no ingenuity, nor denied by any reasonable scepticism.
Every year and every day thousands of Christians find peace
and joy in believing. Every year and every day many are
rescued by Christian faith from the ways of sin, and learn to
tread the paths of piety towards a fair life and a peaceful
death. Every soul that believes on Christ has an inner history
of struggle with sin and of divine aid, of prayer answered and
peace vouchsafed which is real with a reality compared with
which the reality of mere material things is like a cloud which
passes away. Conduct, affection, character: these are the
] 'inducts of faith, and these are above the power of intellectual
doubt or changing modes of thought, in the circle of the inner-
most life which centres in the personality given to each of us
by God as a sacred and inalienable trust.

Yet though evangelical faith be thus founded on what is
eternal, we are not, of course, freed from the necessity of trying
tn adapt its doctrines to our intellectual, and its usages to our
social, surroundings. It adheres to the rock, not like the castle
which is built once to last for ever, but like a tree, which
requires not only a firm standing-place, but also earth and
water and air. Christianity is a survival because it was the
fittest, and certainly it has not usually wanted rivals. Paganism,
philosophy, humanism, and many another scheme of life have
tried to supplant it. and been overthrown by it. It rules in the
right of the strongest. More hardy and enduring than rival
religions, that of Christ has outworked, outsuffered, and out-
lived them all. It holds the field ; nor will it ever be sup-
planted save by a new faith which can exert greater power
over the heart and life.

And since this is the case we need not be afraid to
examine it. Criticism can no more endanger the life of a
winking religion than dissecting its flowers and fruits will kill

;62 EXP LO RATIO EVANGELIC A

a tree. Brutality, materialism, worldliness, sloth, selfishness :
these are the foes with which Christianity has to contend in
the great majority of hearts ; while mere intellectual criticism
brings scarcely an appreciable peril, except in the case of those
few persons who live a solitary and an intellectual life. And
these few must learn to face the danger, just as those who live
an active life must face the temptations of the world.

The popular dislike of the criticism of doctrine arises from
a kind of materialism, a very natural and human materialism,
but yet something very different from faith. As every man
has a body, so there must be something of the corporeal about
all our feelings and beliefs. Therefore the more strongly a
man feels the nobler and higher elements in a character or in
an institution, the more eagerly he longs to bring it out from
its material surroundings and its lower associations, to idealise
and even to deify it. Every one who attributes to the person
or the institution nobler qualities and a more illustrious origin
pleases him. Every one who says a word which seems in any
way to draw the person or institution on to the level of common
life displeases him. It may, perhaps, savour of paradox to
call this natural tendency a result of materialism. Yet it
really is such. It is because men feel that they cannot see
the divine in that which comes daily, and cannot realise the
ideal in the common, that, therefore, they must set apart in
a higher sphere, and remove as far as possible from human
contact, what they admire to the degree of worship. The spirit
of hero-worship is but the obverse of the medal of which the
reverse is the unemotional and materialist view of life which is
so natural. Because we admire, we must raise the object of
our admiration on a pedestal, lest we should lose him in the
crowd. Only that which is exceptional can continue to claim
our homage.

This being a radical fact of human nature, it is evident
that we must feel keenly the danger of submitting our spiritual
heroes, above all the Founder of Christianity, to the keen and
necessarily unreverential Bcrutiny of historic science. " We live
by admiration and by love," and that which seems likely to
endanger our admiration and love, both of them very tender
plants, seems likely to put in peril our spiritual life.

THE CRITICISM OF DOCTRINE

If, however, it be allowed thai faith ba separable from mere
rations, and consists essentially in a relation of heart and will
to that higher power which is at once infinitely above us and
intimately within us, we shall be able to view without excessive
concern the inroads of critical method and historic imagination.
We -hall feel that, unless human nature is radically changed,

Deeds of our higher self must seek and find satisfaction,
and that, unless the nature of the world is changed, the facts
of the higher life must still form the atmosphere which man
must breathe. Eistorical and philosophical views are of the
surface, but this is of the essence. Changed intellectual views
can be but a passing danger to faith: its old secular foe is of
quite another and a more spiritual kind.

The great danger which besets deeper religious speculation
is one which equally besets all other speculation in matters
closely related to action and practical life, which makes perilous
the reasonings of the politician and the moralist, just as it does
those of the theologian. It arises from the imperfection of our
knowledge, and especially from our very superficial knowledge
of ourselves. At best we know only that side of ourselves
which comes into consciousness, which is but a part, and it
may be by no means the most important part, of our natures.
Behind and beyond the conscious self lies the unconscious self,
playing in life a part the magnitude and importance of which
we seldom realise. The existence of the unconscious stratum
of self is the ultimate justification of conservatism in all matters
which concern practice. But it does not justify conservatism
in religion more than it justifies conservatism in politics or
in art.

In an earlier part of this work we contended that the
main doctrines of what is commonly called natural religion,
the existence and attributes of God, the responsibility and
destiny of man. cannot lie proved by any process of reasoning,
but are practical beliefs, perceptive views immediately based
upon the sensations and facts of the spiritual life. It is
likely that some readers who found no difficulty in accepting
these views will be surprised at the further steps in the same
direction which we now propose to take; for our contention
is. that if not all, at least great part of the doctrines of what

364 EXPLORATIO EVANGELICA

is commonly called revealed religion are of the same character ;
that these also admit of verification on the practical side.

Of course it cannot be held that if we take the Creeds
and the Articles of the Christian Churches as they stand, it
is possible to find practical confirmation for all, or for nearly
all, their contents. The Christian Creeds and the Articles are
curious compounds, which grew up in an atmosphere saturated
with false notions as to science, false notions as to metaphysics,
false notions as to history. They contain many elements
foreign to the teaching of the Founder of Christianity. They
contain elements contrary to science and history. Yet the
root principles of what we may call the general creed of
Christendom are of eternal truth, and, if only the superimposed
mass were cleared away, would be visible for what they are :
noble statements of the deepest facts of human nature, and
of the real relations existing between man and the higher
Powers.

Of course the appeal to life and to human nature can never
be so direct or so satisfactory, in the case of Christian doctrine,
as in the case of the main truths of what may be termed
natural religion. For proof of such doctrine as the good-
ness and wisdom of God, the direction of human life by
divine providence, the hearing and answering of prayer, we
may appeal directly to experience. And these doctrines belong
not only to Christianity, but to all religions worthy of
the name. They are as strongly held by Mohammedans as
by Christians ; we can learn them as well from Plato or
Epictetus as from Isaiah or St. Paul. But Christianity is a
revealed religion and a historical religion. Every Christian
necessarily attaches weight to the utterances of the Founder
and his immediate disciples, and to the history of the Christian
Church. There could be no man, outside the narrow limits
of a few fanatical sects, who could persuade himself that his
own spiritual experience would assure him of the truth of the
whole of Christian doctrine. There may be, and there is, much
in the creed and in the teaching of the Pounder which we,
with our poor faculties, would never have discovered, and which
sometimes seems hard t<> accept. But supposing that such
deeper doctrines commend themselves to the spiritual faculties

THE CRITICISM OF DOCTRINE 365

of men of om race who have those faculties in the Inchest
perfection, supposing that in our own better moods we seem
to be nearer to realising them than in the materialist moods
of every day, then they can claim at least not to be inconsistent

with human nature ; ami it would be a fatal arrogance to
■t them because they do not appeal readily to the mass
of mankind, or because in our ordinary daily routine we cannot
realise their truth and importance. If the appeal to experience
leads to a mere democratic counting of heads, then, no doubt,
it will be fatal. The appeal must be made in a spirit of self-
distrust. But this is the case in all deeper scientific research.
The man of science has to learn patience, self-suppression, dis-
trust of the obvious, and we have but to exercise the same
fatuities in the search for doctrinal truth, in order to seek it
without too great danger. It is an astonishing sight to see,
as we sometimes do, men of eminence in some branch of
Bcience, who know the danger of hasty assertion in their own
province, entirely escape from the control of the scientific
conscience when they deal with ethical and spiritual truth.
They seem to fancy that knowledge of visible and material
fact can be gained only by self-control and self-devotion, but
that knowledge of things invisible and spiritual is obvious to
every one. And yet mistakes in the one case lead only to
small disadvantage, mistakes in the other case lead to wreck,
the perversion of character, utter failure in fulfilling the
purposes of life.

We must in our criticism of creed carefully distinguish
two elements: the idea which gives birth to the doctrine, and
the expression which the doctrine finds in the intellectual

sphere.

The idea or general principle of a doctrine must be judged
on the grounds of experience and history, in accordance with
that principle of relativity which is recognised as the condition
of all our knowledge. It has been above 1 maintained that
even our knowledge of the world of sense is not, from the
point of view of intellectual speculation, objectively valid.
Examination of physical fact leads us only to results which
are (1) valid in experience, and so practically objective; (2)

1 eh. III.

366 EXPLORATIO EVANGELICA

valid for all mankind, and so universally subjective. In
regard to our knowledge of that with which religion deals,
God and the spiritual nature of man, we can also only reach
the practically objective and the universally subjective : this
we have already demonstrated to the best of our ability.

In dealing with the specific principles of Christianity also
we shall be obliged to stop at the same point. If they are
true as working hypotheses, and if they are true for all
men, then they are as true as it is possible for any assertions
to be, as true as the assertion that fire is hot or grass is green.

It is clear that in transposing doctrine from the domain of
the absolute to that of the relative we entirely change the tests
of its truth and validity. Metaphysical arguments drawn from
the nature of thought fall to the ground ; a 'priori reasonings
are out of court. And at the same time the progress of
historic criticism prevents us from using passages of Scripture
as proofs of doctr'ne. The place of these appeals is taken by
an appeal to history and to human nature.

The doctrines of Christianity have a validity which is
practically objective if they are suited to be principles of action,
if they satisfy the heart and stimulate the will. Speaking
generally, and not of special doctrines in detail, we may say
that no religion has ever existed which had this power in such
a degree as Christianity. The blood of the martyrs is not only
the seed of the Church, but the best seal of Church doctrine.
And the lives of Christians are not less conclusive than their
deaths. We have observed that the love felt by individuals
one for another is the measure of the practical objectivity
which they bestow on one another. So the Christian faith, which
has been passionately adored by so many thousands, may claim
practical objectivity in the highest degree.

And Christian doctrine may claim universal subjectivity, if
it be true for all members of the human race. This claim
cannot, indeed, be allowed to many doctrines which have been
regarded from time to time a- pari of Christianity. But it
may, with some confidence, be claimed fur the main principles
of the faith. Wherever it has been preached it has made
converts, and genuine converts have been the better for its
acceptance. Such at least is the Christian contention that

THE CRITICISM OF DOCTRINE ^.j

the doctrine is Buited t<> man as man, and not merely to cer-
tain rates ami classes.

These observations suggesl an interesting analogy between
what may be called the Btatics and the dynamics of doctrine,
if we understand by the former term an examination of
doctrine in the light of experience, and by the latter its history
in the Church.

Examining doctrine statically we should investigate its
concord with experience, that is to say its truth, in the relative
sense. Examining it dynamically we should enquire whether
it has held its ground in the world, and belonged to the best
times and the noblest activities of the Church. But if truth
in the case of a doctrine means that it has great practical
objectivity and complete subjective universality, then it is clear
that true doctrine will have a power of survival far greater
than that of doctrine which has not the mark of truth. Being
practically objective it will have great power over men's hearts
and wills, and being universal it will attract a larger number
of men. And the converse will, at least in some degree, hold
good. Doctrines which finally prevail in the struggle for
existence will almost of necessity possess practical objectivity
and universal subjectivity, and so be true in the human sense of
the word. Thus the same doctrines will come out best in the
statical and the dynamical aspect. "We thus discover a concord
in the place of what was, if not a discord, at least an obscurity.
Fur if true doctrine were merely an intellectually correct view
bo the nature of the supernatural, there does not appear to
be any reason in its essential nature why it should prevail over
error in the < ihurch, though we may, of course, find such a
reason in the constant control of divine providence. Thus is
established, from a new point of view, the validity of the appeal
to history as a test of truth in doctrine.

Thus far we have spoken of the main principles of
I Ihristian doctrine. We must next turn to their expression in
the creeds of the Church. And here criticism may move with
bolder steps. It cannot be doubted that our knowledge of the
laws of thought is more complete than was that of our ancestors,
or that of the Greeks and Jews. And our notions of history
are tar more developed and scientific than theirs. As regards

368 EXPLORATIO EVANGELICA

the intellectual expression of the Creed, there is hope of pro-
gress. As regards its root-principles and underlying ideas less
may be expected.

If we adhere closely to the lines of historic development
we may find points as to which the nineteenth century may
improve on the Creed of the second. But of course any
attempt to develop a creed on the same iconoclastic principles
on which the French at their Bevolution tried to develop a
new morality and a new religion, is bound to fail utterly.

Yet we may find in the intellectual and moral conditions
of modern life certain principles of construction and progress.
Were it otherwise, if our task were merely to criticise the
doctrines of Christianity and to refine them until they no
longer clashed with modern criticism, our attempt would be
perhaps a necessary, but certainly a melancholy one. The
really hopeful and inspiring elements in it come from an ap-
preciation of what is contributed by modern science and feeling
towards a permanent establishment of some principles which
must belong to religion in the future.

As regards the feelings and inspirations which lie at the
basis of religious life in our days it is useless to speak. No
one could possibly set forth to any purpose in a few pages
the outlines of the divine ideas which especially belong to
our age, and which it is our business in life to realise and to
appreciate. They vary indeed from country to country, and
from Church to Church. The ideas are so many-sided and
indefinite, and so much mingled with intellectual elements
and habits of thought, that they cannot be expressed in few
words. We can only say that, in so far as any writer or
teacher grasps any part of them, he becomes to the age an
inspired teacher. Those who live a hundred years hence may
be able, looking back, to see what divine purposes were given
to our generation to work out. From our eyes, at least from
our intellectual perception, these things are hidden. Obedience
and loyalty, not keenness of mental vision, are the qualities
which fit men to bring before the world something of divine
teaching.

But the communication to man of the divine ideas is a
process which gradually goes on, and has no sudden changes.

THE CRITICISM <>/■' DOCTRINE 309

Religion, and even Christianity, for us must be in all essentials
what they were for our fathers. In some matters clearer
vision is given to as, in other matters we are inferior to our
predecessors. The ethical atmosphere, the spiritual environ-
ment tit' man are the same as of old. Where we markedly
dilter from those who have gone before us is in our intellectual
habits. The progress of the present century has been intel-
lectual m a far higher degree than moral. And, therefore, we
may naturally look rather to progressive intellectual principles
than to moral enthusiasms for the key to modern doctrinal
construction.

Here three principles in particular will meet our observa-
tion. In the first place the keen sense of law as dominant in
the visible universe has profoundly affected our views of ethics
and of theology. In this matter the eloquent pages of the
author of Natural Religion are most instructive. Our
perception of the vastness of the universe, and its subjection
to the most rigid law, have disposed us to realise the majesty
and the wisdom of God, as our predecessors could not. And
the notion of law has passed from nature into human life.
The result is that a large part of the teaching of the Founder
of Christianity has acquired for us a far greater meaning and
depth. The saying of the Sermon on the Mount, " By their
fruits ye shall know them," could not bear to men of past
times so deep a meaning as it bears to us. The parable of the
sower and that of the talents, and scores of other passages of
the Synoptic Gospels, have become, after eighteen eenturies, a
new revelation to those who appreciate as we do the fixed and
orderly environment of life. AVe catch also a similar note in
St. Paul's " Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap."
And it is a note, the deep echoes of which sound day by day
through men's lives, in a keener sense of personal responsibility
for every action and word and thought.

- oncUy, the theory of evolution which now controls all
our thought as regards nature and human history, can better
than the older views of creation and history be used as a
foundation or condition of a higher conception of the social
life of man. As to this I have already spoken in previous
chapters, and shown how naturally the progress of man may

24

370 EXPLO RATIO EVANGELICA

be regarded as the result of a continuous divine revelation
affecting every age, and finding its manifestation in doctrine,
in art, or in institution. Nothing could be more unlike than
such views to the old mechanical and external views of
revelation. And no change of mental attitude could have a
more far-reaching or universal effect on the formulation of
doctrine, and even on its substance.

There is one especial part of evolutionary doctrine which
opens our eyes in dealing with religious construction. If, as
some of the ablest of biologists are ready to assert, we may
venture to see in the natural world a process of the preparation
of organs for functions as yet undeveloped, we gain thence an
insight into what we may almost venture to call the mind of
God and his purposes towards the human race, the value of
which can scarcely be exaggerated. It would then become
abundantly clear that we live not merely for ourselves or for
the present, but for the race and for the future. No view
could be more humbling to reason, for future function is
necessarily outside the direct ken of intellect. No view could
so clearly bring out the dependence of human progress on divine
will and revelation. In a recent able work,1 Mr. Benjamin
Kidd has endeavoured, with a large measure of success, to
show in detail how each generation is constrained, in spite of
its own interests, to toil for the future and the unseen. Here
is apparently a great light to throw on doctrine, whether it be
thrown on the past, the present, or the future.

In the third place, as we have already pointed out in the
last chapter, a great change has in recent times come over our
whole view of the domains of metaphysics and of psychology,
through the discovery of the importance of the will, and of
the relative character of all human knowledge. As the pre-
Darwinian views of creation are put out of court by new
theories of evolution, so the writings of the ethical philosophers,
from Plato to the Utilitarians, are rendered antiquated by the
recognition which has grown clearer and clearer in the writings
of modem psychologists and philosophers, that virtue and vice
are not questions of knowledge, but that the will, divine and
human, is the great formative principle of the universe and of
1 Social Evolution.

THE CRITICISM OF DOCTRINE 37 «

conduct The true doctrine of the will is to be found in the
writings of the Founder of Christianity and of St. Paul, and
has ever Bince been struggling against the Platonic psychology;
but it has usually beeo overlaid and smothered by it. In
time, perhaps, thought may entirely discard the old established
views which make life begin with perception instead of with
desire and passion.

To take an instance: The older orthodoxy insists on the
thesis that if the Founder of Christianity was divine all his
words were infallible, his knowledge perfect. We have, as
I conceive, to entirely transpose this doctrine if we would
fit it to modern minds. It is the sinlessness and not the
omniscience of our Founder on which modern doctrine has to
insist Sin is the barrier between the soul and God, and a
being without sin would enjoy a complete and uninterrupted
communion with the divine. But it would not thence follow
that his opinions as to the physical world and as to history
would necessarily be accurate.

In this fashion many of the current doctrines of the Creed
require reconsideration. If the present wrriter, as must be
expected, makes many mistakes in a tentative attempt to
discern the form of doctrine best suited to our intellectual
condition, these mistakes can be remedied by others. This
alternative appears to be preferable to an entire avoidance of
the criticism of doctrine, for fear of making mistakes, or of
offending Christian teachers by this or that utterance.

And there is another thing which in examining the Creed
we must never forget. In speaking of illusion in doctrine I
have tried to show that beliefs which are demonstrably full of
illusion may yet well be truer than the alternatives current
at the time. It is better to accept too much than to starve
the powers by too rigid scepticism. If we caii find a better
expression for Christian belief, it is well. But even in
expressions which are out of date there resides much truth
which it would be a sad mistake to throw away because it is
contained in an unworthy vehicle. If we cannot find gold
pure, we should scarcely throw away gold ore, because of the
baser elements which it contains.

CHAPTER XXIX

SACRIFICE IN CHRISTIANITY

The luminous theory of evolution, first fully applied to the
biological sciences, has to be introduced into all the fields of
historic science also. This is a process which must take time,
and will probably serve as a task for more than one genera-
tion. In the performance of the task there will naturally be
many false starts, and many deviations from the true course.
And in no part of history are these more likely to occur than
where the reason is overshadowed and confused by the strong
feelings which arise when there is question of our cherished
beliefs and hopes.

It is, therefore, by no means surprising that attempts to
set forth the history of religion from the evolutional point of
view have hitherto met with incomplete success. I do not,
however, propose here to examine any of them in order to
establish this thesis. It will be a more satisfactory and
useful attempt if I take up one thread of the strand of
religious history, and endeavour to show what I conceive to be
the right point of view in regard to it. Let us make an
experiment, by no means in covporc vili, but in religious belief
a corpus vile is not so easy to discover; therefore we must
move with the more caution and reticence

The researches of Robertson Smith into the history and
the natural history of sacrifice form one of the most important
chapters of historical theology. Since these researches ap-
peared, mosl of the younger generation of critics have seen
clearly that sacrifice is the most fundamental fact of religious

SACRIFICE IN CHRISTIANITY 373

history, and that from it oui attempts to trace the underlying
Ideas of various religions must start. As is well known he
discriminates three kinds of sacrifice: (1) merely donatory
or honorific; (2) piacular; (3) mystic. And although in the
actual sacrificial customs among peoples at various levels of
culture these distinctions do not rigidly hold, yet there can be
no doubt of their value to clearness of thought and to critical
science. Let us then briefly sketch the development of the
three kinds of sacrifice thus mentioned, out of barbarism into
paganism, and thence into Christianity.

1. Donatory. It is by a natural instinct that barbarians
offer to their gods, whether fetishes, or the spirits of their
ancestors, or the powers of nature, those things which they
themselves commonly use and most highly value. The
simplest offerings consist of food and drink, without which life
cannot be sustained. If the deity be an animal he is offered
a sacred abode. If he is an ancestral spirit, he receives
clothes and weapons and vessels of gold and silver, which are
laid up at the tomb, or burnt that he may receive by fire the
essence or spirit of the offering. "When ruder religion has
developed into anthropomorphic idolatry, the deity embodied
in his image must have a temple, and slaves to tend it ; and
into the temple flows every kind of precious offering. The
Btatue is often clad with garments and decked with jewels, and
often the revenue of a great sacred estate is spent in providing
all things needful or desirable for the god, and for the priests
who tend and represent him. Droves of oxen and sheep are
butchered before him, and his dwelling becomes a rich
treasure-house of works of art and objects of luxury. This
was the case, as is well known, in all the great centres of the
religious worship of the Greeks, Olympia and Delphi, Ephesus
and Miletus.

It was only by slow degrees, as man's moral nature was
developed, that it dawned upon him that, after all, it was
possible to bring to the heavenly powers gifts of greater value
than objects of art and luxury. That goodness and self-
sacrifice in the votary were more likely to procure him the
favour of heaven than any rich offerings is the feeling of
true piety. And we may trace alike in the religion of

374 EXPLORATIO EVANGELICA

Greece and in that of Judaea, the process by which the
purer and more spiritual superseded the coarser and more
primitive notion.

In the Works and Days of Hesiod the purpose and the
efficacy of sacrifice is stated in the crudest way. " Gifts
persuade the gods, as they persuade the high-born chief." In
a word, sacrifice was bribery, and by sacrifice the wicked man
could have his will of the good. Against such a view the
nobler souls of Greece, poets and philosophers, protest strongly.
"God," they say, "loves the just, while he repels the proud,
the voluptuous, the earthly." And even the ordinary citizen,
when he brought a sacrifice to his deity, did not regard it as a
matter of course that it would be favourably received, but
watched closely the conduct of the victim and all surrounding
signs, to see if his gift and his jDerson were acceptable to the
divine powers, or rejected by them.

A complication was, however, introduced into the matter.
The deity had his priest to represent him ; and to the priest,
who had to live, the ethical and spiritual aspect of sacrifice
was not the only one which presented itself. In the writings
of the Jewish prophets we find the lower and the higher
aspect of sacrifice alternately prominent, as the sacerdotal or
the spiritual side of the Hebrew religion prevails. In
Malaclii} for example, we read, " Ye have robbed me, even
this whole nation. Bring ye all the tithes into the storehouse,
that there may be meat in mine house, and prove me now
herewith, saith the Lord of hosts, if I will not open you the
windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there
shall not be room enough to receive it." But such utterances
as these are exceptional, and we scarcely recognise in them
the true voice of Israel. Far nobler is the strain of the
earlier Isaiah,2 "I delight not in the blood of bullocks, or of
lambs, or of he-goats." "Incense is an abomination to me."
"Put away the evil of your doings from before mine eyes;
cease to do evil; learn to do well ; seek judgment, relieve the
oppressed." Still more familial to our ears is the noble
htnguage of the I '.sal m, :i " Sacrifice and offering thou didst, not

1 iii. 9. - i. 11-17.

'■'• \\. »i : roughly quoted in Hebrews x.

SACRIFICE IN CHRISTIANITY 375

desire; mine ears hast thou opened: burnt ottering and sin
offering hast thou not required. Then said I, Lo, I come: in
the volume of the book it is written of me, I delight to do thy
will, I ) my ( rod."

In this manner the mere barbarous notion that gifts
please the gods as they would please a neighbour gives way
and is superseded. Among the Greeks it gives way to the
notion that the gods regard the person of the worshipper and
his character more than the character of the gift. And among
the Jews it gives way to a still nobler conception, that it is
the offering of the heart, self- sacrifice, which is pleasing to God,
rather than the offering of any outward things. "I come to
d>. thy will, O my God."

When, however, we speak of an evolution, it must be
observed that such evolution is not altogether a matter of
tima In the age of Plato, just as in the age of Hesiod, the
ruder and more uneducated among the Greeks might well
think of bribing the gods. And the book of Malachi is
probably later in date than the early chapters of Isaiah.
The evolution is ethical and is always going on in a nation, so
that every detail of religious life and practice may be variously
regarded by those whose ethical feelings are more highly and
less highly raised. In part it may be a question of education,
in part of natural endowment and refinement. As the nation
becomes more civilised, a larger and larger class reach the
higher level of feeling and refinement. On the other hand,
the nation may for a time retrogress, in which case we find
the opposite phenomenon.

It is very natural that modern writers who are at once
( Christians and believers in historical evolution should put
Christianity at the end of the process of development, and
make all religious history lead up to it. In this view there is
some truth, but also error. The fact is that either the higher
or the lower notion involved in donatory sacrifice may be
taken into Christianity. But they must come in to it by no
regular process of growth, but by baptism into Christ. A
Christian may still lay up in the sacred house a work of art
which he dedicates to God. One of the churches of Marseilles
is. like some ancient shrines, almost lined with the tablets of

376 EXPLORATIO EVANGELIC A

those who wish to show their gratitude after being saved from
wreck at sea. The maintenance of the class of men who are
the servants of God and the ministers of religion is a duty of
the pious in modern days, just as it was of old. And the
higher sacrifice, the sacrifice of self, goes on now as in Jewish
and Pagan days. In a sense it cannot be raised, because in
the nature of things there can be nothing higher than self-
sacrifice. But the sacrifice may now be made for Christian
purposes, in the name of Jesus, and in pure gratitude for all
that Christ has done for mankind. The self-surrender which
the Stoics made to the order of the Universe and the Jew to
the will of Jehovah, the Christian may make to the Father
who sent his Son into the world. There is here no question
of natural growth and progress, but of a rebirth of religion in
the light of the life of the Master.

We must turn to the other kinds of sacrifice, in which
the same order of facts will be found still more vividly
displayed.

2. Piacular sacrifice. Between this and the sacrifice
which is merely donatory there is a broad and deep line of
distinction. In piacular sacrifice a man does not merely offer
to heaven what he would appropriately oiler to his fellow-man.
There is a breach to be healed. By impurity and transgression,
whether of a ritual or of an ethical kind, he feels that he has
offended against his deity. He is no longer on happy, or even
on tolerable, terms with the higher powers. His life is
demanded as the penalty; and he can only redeem his life by
putting in its place another life. He has to make a sin-
offering.

Now, as Mr. Frazer has shown, " the notion that we can
transfer our pains and griefs to some other being who will
bear them in our stead is familiar to the savage mind. It
arises from a very obvious confusion between the physical and
the mental. Because it is possible to transfer a load of wood,
Stones, or what not, from our own back to the back of
another, the savage fancies that it is equally possible to
transfer the burden of his pains and Borrows to another, who
will Btlffer them in his stead."1 Ami with the grief the
1 The Golden Bough, ii. I

SACRIFICE IN CHRISTIANITY

savage thinks that he can transfer the transgression and the
guilt, which in primitive psychology is nol very clearly dis-
tinguished from ii. Hence the custom of expiatory sacrifice

inimals, and, in particular, the [qstitutiou of the scape-
so familiar to all of us.

It was also fell that a piacular offering cannot be of too
precious a life. Hence the Carthaginians and other peoples of
antiquity in times of national peril and distress, when thicken-
ing misfortune told that the gods were angry, offered even
children of their own, "the fruit of my body for the sin of my
soul" The inwardly festering sense of estrangement from the
has been the occasion of deeds of which the records are
some of the darkest pages of history.

Here again we have in the records of history a more
primitive and low, and a nobler and loftier view. Barbarians
think that they can retain the favour of their gods, mostly
deified ancestors, only by a rigorous observance of prescribed
ritual and custom. Any breach of these at once forfeits the
divine favour; but the favour which is lost by a mere irregu-
larity may be won again by a merely formal sacrifice, and
ceremonies of expiation. The sense of sin, the belief that
ethical transgressions erect a barrier between man and God,
grows up at a later stage; nor is it easy to discern how the
moral element first comes in. But a transgression which is
not merely formal, which makes a real breach between man
and his Maker, cannot be cured by a merely ceremonial

Mediation. A life for a life is demanded, and men have
ottered, in many cases, the life which of all was dearest to
them, a clansman, a wife, or a child. Then is added another
highly ethical feature. The gods will not have an unwilling
victim. The sacrificed person must go to the altar freely.
And this voluntary self-sacrifice is the theme of some of the

• beautiful of Greek tales; of the tale of Alcestis, who
died that her husband Admetus might still live ; of the myth
of l'rotesilaus, who offered himself on behalf of the Greek army
Troy, and many others. A parallel case from Jewish legend
is the tale of the voluntary death of the daughter of Jephtha,
by which her father's victory was followed.

Thus as the donatory sacrifice leads up to the surrender

378 EXPLORATIO EVANGELIC A

of the will to God, so the piacular sacrifice leads up to self-
devotion for others. This is the highest form in which the
idea can he expressed ; and it is clear that the circumstances
of human life can suggest no higher possibility of realisation.
The man or woman who gives for another a life, whether by
dying for him or by living for him, lias gone as far as human
nature can go in the divine path of suffering for others.

The ideas embodied in the piacular sacrifice have had a
larger place in Protestant thought and doctrine than almost
any others. Sometimes very crude notions of the substitutory
sacrifice have been baptized into Christ. Theologians have
said that all men for sin were sentenced to death, but that
in Jesus they found a substitute to die on their behalf, and so
appease the righteous anger of God. The blow aimed by an
offended deity must fall, and our Master interposed himself to
receive it. This view is a crude edition of the doctrine
taught by Paul, and by the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews,
which has passed into the woof of Christian, and especially of
Protestant, theology. " We are sanctified through the offering
of the body of Jesus Christ once for all." The sin of man-
kind was transferred to Jesus Christ, who bore it on the cross,
and the righteousness of Jesus Christ was transferred to sinners,
who thereby have become heirs of eternal life.

But such a notion was too materialist to be always accepted.
And, indeed, the great teachers of Christianity have mixed it
from the first with elements of a more spiritual character.
The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews is satisfied with it ;
but St. Paul adds to it the need of faith, by which the merit of
Christ's death must be appropriated. Some of the more spiritual
of the Fathers thought that it was the obedience to death of
the Son, rather than the actual cessation of life, which was
the salvation of the world. They thus introduced that funda-
mental notion of all ethics, that virtue and wickedness reside
in the will, and not in outward deed or manifestation.

The higher Christian view is an adoption into the scheme
of Christian doctrine of the belief that a voluntary sacrifice
of one's self for others saves mankind. It is impossible for
modern psychology to accept the crude notion thai sin and
virtue merit and demerit, can be passed about from one person

SACRIFICE IN CHRISTIANITY 379

to another. Such a notion is sufficiently familiar to barbarians
who are accustomed to -day the children for the father's sins.

or it' a crime has I o committed by a township to avenge it

"ii any member of that township taken at random. Modern
thought holds that virtue and vice belong to the individual
character, and modern justice demands that he only who is
proved guilty shall sutler: not another in his place. And

the harsh edge of individual ethics is turned when we look
on man in society. It is, in all probability, a physiological fact
thai children sutler for the sins of their parents. It is cer-
tainly a common phenomenon of social life that wife should
suffer for husband, or husband for wife; brother for sister, or
sister for brother. In a very profound and real sense we are
all members one of another, and each, is responsible for all ;
the happiness of each depends on the doing of all.

Thus there is a profound spiritual truth in the idea,
worked out with inimitable beauty of language by the later
[saiah, that it is the sufferings of the good Israelite which
redeem all the people to virtue and happiness. "The chas-
tisement of our peace was upon him ; and with his stripes we
are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have
turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid
on him the iniquity of us all." This is the language of pro-
phecy in the highest sense of the word; that is, it is an ex-
pression of truth so profound as always to remain applicable,
and to receive fresh illustration at every crisis of human his-
tory. The Christian Church has very naturally seen in the
sublime eloquence of the prophet an expression of the relation
to the Church of the death of its Founder. And Christian
theology has busied itself with working out intellectual schemes
by which the merits of that death may be made clear and
intelligible. The great human principle in that self-sacrifice
for the good of others saves the world; the Christian variety
of that principle is that Jesus Christ by dying as the repre-
sentative <>l' mankind saved mankind, and that the duty of the
Christian is to die with his Master, and to "fill up that which
is behind of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for his body's
sake, which is the Church."

3. The mystic mcrificc. It is the merit of Robertson

380 EXPLORATIO EVANGEL1CA

►Smith that we recognise the importance of this third kind of
sacrifice. Often in practice it is mingled with the other kinds,
and it grows from the same main root in human nature, yet
it is a different branch of the tree. Primitive man not only
desires to make presents to his deities, and to be free from
transgression against them, but also to be united with them in
one of those solemn bonds of blood-fellowship which are the
strongest ties which can bind the savage to friend or guest.

Eobertson Smith has tried to prove that at that wonderful
early stage of development called totemism, it was a custom,
on certain solemn occasions, for all the tribe to kill and eat
in assembly the sacred animal of the tribe : thus by its blood
to cement their union to one another and to their deity.
There is considerable doubt whether totemism was a stage of
culture passed through by tribes of Aryan race. But it is
certain that a periodical ceremony of eating the god of vegeta-
tion was a feature of the cultus of the ancestors of the German
Slav and Celtic races from a remote antiquity.1 Traces
of it may still be found in the remoter rural districts of
Europe. And the mystic meal of communion, wherein wor-
shipper and worshipped joined in a common repast, the tribes-
men thus cementing a union between them and their deity,
and between one tribesman and another, was fully in vogue
a limng the Greeks of the historic period. It was used by
them mainly in two connections. First, in the secret worship
of Dionysus, which was supposed to have been introduced
into Greece by his priest and votary, the Thracian Orpheus,
and in the mysteries of Demeter and other deities. Some of
these mysteries did not enjoy a very good repute in antiquity,
and they were doubtless mingled with much of barbarism
and even of indecency. Nevertheless they embodied some
religious ideas which the world could not afford to lose, and
their continuance in spite of opposition, and even persecution,
is a proof that they responded to some deep needs of the
human heart. But of the Orphic religion I speak elsewhere.
The second Greek religious institution in which the sacred
meal played a great part was the cultus of the dead. Immedi-
ately after the burial of a dead man, a feast was held in
1 See Frazer, Golden Bough, passim.

SACK/FICE IX CHRISTIANITY 381

which he was regarded as the host, and the crowd of his
relations and descendants as the guests. By eating and drink-
ing with liini they cemented a firm bond of union with him
even in Hades. And at intervals afterwards food and drink
were brought to the tomb, or consumed in common by the
dead and the living.

To tlif mystic (Vast among the Greeks corresponded, among
the Jews, the solemn feast of the Passover. From what origin
that feast originally Bprang we do not clearly know:1 we only
know the custom as it existed in historical times, and the
sacred legend which was told as an explanation of the details
of the ceremonial. But the whole character of the feast pro-
claims that it was at once a bond between the members of the
Jewish nation and a consecration of all to the God of that
nation. The loftier idea of the divine nature, which was the
noble inheritance of the Jews, kept them from any crude
notion that their ( rod partook of the feast with them, though the
first -dieaf of harvest was presented to him; but he had
-auctioned and ordained it, and every Israelite who took part
in it became, in a certain sense, the guest and friend of Jehovah.

Christianity had scarcely begun its course in the world
before it also had a sacred feast. According to the accepted

lunt, to which great historical difficulties attach,2 it arose,
by the direct mandate of the Founder, out of the Jewish Pass-
over feast. But, however that may be, it rapidly developed in
meaning and in character, and became the vehicle of many
ideas foreign to the Passover, and foreign, so far as we can
judge, to the original teaching of the Founder of Christianity.
The primeval and profound ideas, which attached among all
nations of antiquity to the mystic sacrifice, found in it a body
of ceremony to which they could contribute a life and a
meaning. The religions which were, in some degree, rivals of
I !hri8tianity, more especially that of Eleusis and that of Mithras,
had also their sacred meals ; and the necessity arose for a
parallel ceremony in Christianity, which should baptize into
Christ what was valuable and permanent in the doctrine which

1 Many hints as to the origin of the feast may be gathered from Frazer'a

igh.
- These difficulties are discussed elsewhere, in Ch. XXXVI.

382 EXPLORATIO EVANGELICA

had arisen by a natural process out of the religious needs and
feelings of mankind.

In this case again we find that Christianity had to choose
from a whole series of beliefs, some cruder and some more re-
fined, any of which could be converted by the spirit of Christ.
And naturally different schools and parties in the Church have
varied in the form of early belief which they have appropriated.
After a time the influence of the Pagan mysteries was strong.
And these, belonging rather to the uneducated than to the
educated, and growing in the half light of fancy rather than in
the open day of knowledge, were in tone very conservative.
They preserved many of the ideas of very primitive times and
societies, which the more open religion of the Greek cities
rejected at a time when cities all over the world were in a
great measure Hellenised. Thus it was possible for so mate-
rialist a doctrine as transubstantiation to enter Christianity :
a doctrine which, taken literally and crudely, can find an
origin and a parallel only in the beliefs of barbarians. The
barbarian believed that by partaking actually of the body of
the sacred animal he was grafted into the spiritual life of the
tribe. And something of this belief appears to have dictated
some of the wilder customs of Dionysiac celebrations. But
alike the Passover of the Jews and the Funeral Banquets of
the Greeks had risen above this level of belief, and made
ordinary food the vehicle of union with man and God. The
ordinary belief of the more conservative Evangelical Churches
seems to be a rendering of this higher development in the
terms of Christian faith. By partaking of the Holy Communion,
the Anglican and the Lutheran claim communion with the Head
of their faith, as well as with their fellow-believers.

The view of the more rationalist schools who regard the
Christian Eucharist as not much more than a commemorative
rite, which binds believers together by a common memory and
a common hope, may also find a parallel in Pagan times. This
may be found among the more open celebrations of Hellenic
religion, such as the common feasts of the members of phratries
and families, partly in honour of their common ancestor,
historical or legendary, partly as a bond of union among them-
selves. In this case, however, we can scarcely call the ceremony

SACRIFICE IN CHRISTIANITY 3S3

a form of the mystic sacrifice, Bince the element of mysticism,
of imagination, and poetry, has entirely gone, and we have
rather to do with an institution which would be justified on
grounds of social and political expediency.

In all forma of religion, from primitive fetishism to the
highest forma of Christianity, sacrifice is the leading idea. The
custom of sacrifice may he described as the germ out of which
Bpring alike doctrine and worship. Assuming the evolutional
view of religion to be established, let us consider how it is
likely to affect the existing beliefs of the Christian world.

At first its effects may well be very destructive. Religion
may be regarded as a survival, and an unworthy survival, of
savage beliefs and modes of thought. It will be within the
memory of many that when the evolutional origin of man was
propounded by Darwin, the view was in many quarters re-
garded as infinitely debasing. If man developed from an ape-
like creature, lie must still, it was thought, be ape-like. It was
forgotten that every human being certainly arises out of an
embryo, which is in organism far beneath the ape. But the
nigral horror with which Darwinism was once regarded has
passed away, and it is generally recognised that if man has
arisen from debased ancestors that does not affect the question
of what he now is. In the same way, before long, it will
certainly be recognised that the truth and value of Christian
faith are not compromised by any view as to its historic
origin.

Two views are possible as to the relations between pre-

istian roots of Christian doctrines, and those doctrines
themselves. In one view the early parallels are types and
symbols, sent into the world to prepare the human mind for
the higher knowledge which was to come. In this fashion, by
long usage, Jewish ceremonies and beliefs have been regarded,
in the Church, as a prophecy of future things. The other
view is more guarded. In it Pagan beliefs and the Christian
beliefs which have succeeded them are alike fruit of the same
tree, results of the same tendencies working in all history, and
having a more perfect course as time goes on. It is by degrees
that the divine order is revealed in the world: in all thi>
and in religious belief no less than in all the other departments

3S4 EXPLORATIO EVANGELICA

of culture. Savages feel the stirring of the same impulses
which are later the crown of human being, and embody them
to the best of their power, though to us the form of embodi-
ment may be coarse and repulsive.

In conclusion, however, I must return to, and enforce, the
view from which I took my start. It is quite misleading, in
treating of the history of religion, to suppose that it is a
regular development through time, and that Christianity
merely carries on to a higher level all the lines in which
pre-Christian religion, whether Jewish or Greek, had moved.
Most of the ideas of earlier religion lived on, it is true, in
Christianity. But they were not developed merely on the
lines of natural progress. They were baptized into the
Christian faith ; they were transmuted by the alchemy of the
new religion, and placed in a personal relation to the Founder
of it. We can find in early, in medieval, or in modern
Christianity a parallel, more or less exact, to nearly all the
phases and the phenomena of ancient religion. Thus if the
humblest Christian is in some ways superior to the giants of
old, to Plato and Seneca and Marcus Aurelius, it is not only be-
cause he stands on a higher rung of the ladder of evolution, but
also because in the time between the world has been washed
with the blood of Jesus Christ, and baptized into his death.
Historical science must not be treated in a fashion too closely
analogous to biological science. The great personalities, the
men who have received a mission direct from heaven, inter-
vene and change the whole course of history. And among all
great crises of history brought about by the working of a
personality, none can compare with that from which all
Western nations date their era.

CHAPTER XXX

THE INCARNATION

The doctrines in regard to her Founder which the Church
cherishes are mainly three. First, the Incarnation, or doctrine
of Christ's birth, with which is closely associated the Christian
festival of Christmas. Second, the Atonement, or doctrine of
Christ's death, with which Good Friday is associated in the
Church. And third, the Exaltation, or doctrine of the
Resurrection of Christ, with which the festivities of Easter
and Ascension-day are closely connected. By her regularly
recurring sacred seasons the Church has, from very early times,
directed the minds of men to these doctrines, and brought
them to bear on the Christian life.

In Lux Mundi, the expression of the views of the newest
and most progressive of the schools of Anglican thought, we
find it Laid down that the most fundamental of the doctrines
of Christianity is that of the Incarnation. And this may well
be true, though qo doubt its truth depends largely upon what
i- implied in the doctrine. But it is, in the first place, the
basis lather than the full meaning of the doctrine that we
have to consider.

Some may suppose the basis to be historical. As a
matter of fact, many Christians would say, the birth of Jesus
was miiacnlous, and that miracle established the fact that in
Jesus God became flesh and dwelt among men. Such a
view is scarcely tenable in the face of historic criticism.
The miraculous birth cannot possibly be regarded as an
event of objective history. We can admit events as historical

386 EXPL0RAT10 EVANGELICA

only on satisfactory evidence. And it is obvious that in
this matter there can never have been any evidence of the
kind which history demands before she accepts a fact as
objectively valid.

What then is the basis of the doctrine of the Incarnation ?
The basis is certainly the exjDerience of the early Church.
Doctrine, like myth, is an attempt to explain experience.
But it is a more philosophic attempt, since it has to be
approved, not by the uncritical imagination, but by the criti-
cal reason. " The early disciples," writes Dorner,1 " had
experienced Christianity as a divine history of their inner
being; believing in Christ they had obtained access to God, in
the Son they had found the Father. In the innermost, most
certain fact of their consciousness, there lay for them the
impulse and the necessity to place the person of Christ, the
Founder of this, their new life, in the closest, most vital
relation to the Father." It was a sacred spiritual experience
which filled the first disciples, and their attempts to account
for the experience led to the formulation of views as to the
person of the Master.

During the lifetime of Jesus speculation in regard to his
person naturally proceeded on purely Jewish lines. One
question in regard to him predominated over all others : Was
he or was he not the Messiah ? It was Messiah whom the
whole Jewish race was expecting, with deliverance from the
Eoman sway, and the beginning of a new and nobler national
life. By degrees the disciples came to believe that their
Master was the Messiah, though of quite another order from
him whom they had expected. When and how they arrived
at this conviction we can discern but vaguely in the New
Testament. But in the Gospels there is nothing of meta-
physical speculation as to the relation borne by their Master
to his Father in heaven.2 Such matters belonged to a
sphere of thought quite outside that of the first circle of
followers.

But towards the end of the first century, theories of the
Incarnation began to make their appearance, and doctrine on the

1 The Person of Christ. Eng. Trans, i. -17.
2 The remarkable verse, Matt, xi. 'J7, Btands quite isolated.

THE INCARNATION 387

subject to be formulated. Doctrine in regard to the person of
the Pounder had, no less than tales as to his history, an origin
earlier than Christianity. Its roots went down partly into
the soil of the Jewish consciousness of the divine elements in
the world, parti}- into the soil of Greek, and more especially
Platonic, philosophy. In a luminous chapter1 Prof. Harnack
has set forth the different ways in which the relation of the
temporal to the eternal presented itself to the Hebrew and
to the (Ireek mind. "According to the theory held by the
Jews, and by tlif whole of the Semitic nations, everything of
real value that from time to time appears on earth has its
existence in heaven. In other words, it exists with God;
that is, God possesses a knowledge of it; and for that reason
it has a real being. But it exists beforehand with God in the
Bame way as it appears on earth; that is, with all the material
attributes belonging to its essence. Its manifestation on earth
is merely a transition from the unseen to the seen (fyavepovaOcu).
In becoming visible to the senses, the object in question assumes
no attribute that it did not already possess with God. Hence
its material nature is by no means an inadequate expression
of it, nor is it a second nature added to the first. The truth
rather is that what was in heaven before is now revealing
itself upon earth, without any sort of alteration taking place
in the process."

This fashion of regarding the world, which makes creation
really a manifestation of God, which makes God the essential
and permanent, and all appearance merely partial revelation
of him, is eminently characteristic of the two most striking
features of the Jewish mind: its absorption in God, and its

ntial materialism, by which the distinction of body and
spirit, of will and activity, is slurred over. The Hellenic and
Platonic conception, if less religious, is more spiritual.

" According to the Hellenic conception, which has become
identified with Platonism, the idea of pre-existence is inde-
pendent of the idea of God ; it is based upon the conception
of the contrast between spirit and matter, between the infinite
and finite, found in the cosmos itself. In the case of all
spiritual beings, life in the body or flesh is at bottom an

1 Haruack, Doymeagcsclticlite, i. 755. Trans. App, I.

388 EXPLO RATIO EVANGELIC A

inadequate and unsuitable condition, for the spirit is eternal,
the flesh perishable. But the pre-temporal existence, which
was only a doubtful assumption as regards ordinary spirits,
was a matter of certainty in the case of the higher and purer
ones. They lived in an upper world long before this earth
was created, and they lived there as spirits without the
' polluted garment of the flesh.' Now, if they resolved for
some reason or other to appear in this finite world, they cannot
simply become visible, because they have no ' visible form.'
They must rather ' assume flesh,' whether they throw it about
them as a covering, or really make it their own by a process
of transformation or mixture."

Prof. Harnack shows how both of these ways of thinking
influenced the formation of Christian doctrines of the Incarna-
tion. The Hellenic element was the more powerful, but the
Jewish was by no means inoperative. And in fact, in the
higher theology and philosophy, both ways of thinking have
operated down to our own days. At present the triumph of
the doctrine of evolution has compelled us to modify the form
under which either the one or the other can be accepted. We
speak now of the divine control of history, and the divine
guidance of evolution when we Judaise ; and when we Hellenise
we speak of the ideal as an end towards which the actual may
gradually approach. But for all the alteration in form, the
principles still remain.

Those who wish to see in detail the way in which the
doctrine of the Incarnation took form in the Church under
these various influences, must turn to the writings of masters
such as Harnack and lleville. In the present work a very
slight sketch must suffice. The roots of the doctrine of the
Logos are too many and too widely spread to be here even
enumerated. Egypt and Babylon, as well as ' Greece and Judsea,
contributed elements to the doctrine. In Egypt, Ra, the sun,
is the divine being who manifests to the world the glory of
the supreme godhead, as does the sun-god Mithras in Persia.
At a far later period such ideas prevailed in Europe. yElius
Aristides, in his discourse on Athena, speaks of her as dwelling
with her father, united with his being, his counsellor and
companion, and his agent in dealing with the world. It is

THE INCARNATE 389

obvious how Bhort a Btep lies between this view of Athena
;ui»l the doctrine common in the early < 'lunch, that the Wisdom
or Spirit of God waa a separate personality, a mediator or
mediatrix between man and the hidden deity.

But it is in the works of Philo, who in some ways may be
ahnust considered as the earliest of Christian theologians, that
the doctrine of the L>i;os appeal's in full development. In the
vague and nebulous system of this learned contemporary of
the Apostles, the Logos is the mediator between God and man,
God being regarded as too exalted to come into direct contact
with matter or with mankind. It is quite natural, considering
the extremely oratorical character of later Greek philosophy,
that the sway of God in the world should not he said to be
by goodness or will, by thought or feeling, but by logos, word
or discourse. The divine Word, according to Philo,1 "first
appears as a personal helper in the Old Testament. He is the
servant of (lod who wrestled with Jacob, and bade him change
his name. He is God's vicegerent, who makes known God's
will to the world, the interpreter who expounds it, the angel
who rescues the godly from destruction. He is the mediator
and arbitrator, the priest of the individual soul, the high priest
of the world, the paraclete and intercessor for whose sake God
is gracious to mankind. . . . He is the true high priest, the
president and mediator of the holy community, reaching God
above and men below, and representing the whole human race."
The Logos is the first burn of God, and nearer to him than any
iture, and his mother is the divine wisdom, ever virgin and
unstained.

All this language, which may well surprise readers to
whom it is new, is in Philo mere metaphysical and poetical
rhetoric without clear or definite meaning. But he made some
attempt to attain to a more definitely historic doctrine, on the
only line possible to a Jew, by occasionally speaking of Moses
as the Logos. " Moses enjoyed intercourse with the Father and
Creator of all, and was held worthy of the same appellation,
for lie was called God and King of all his people. He was

1 The following g tre taken from Hausrath, Time of the A\

ii. UiS. Eng. Trans, i. 185. In the ootea of Hausrath evi is justified

by reference to, or quotation from, Philo'a writings

39o EXPLORATIO EVANGELICA

permitted to enter into the darkness ; that is, into the formless,
invisible, and incorporeal Being who represents the Universe." ]
Historically Moses was Mediator between God and man ;
providence had made him the earthly embodiment of the
reason of God.

But the doctrine that Moses was the Logos was but a
poor and barren result of the contact of Judaism and Platonism.
It died away, and its place was taken by another identification,
destined through all ages to be a brilliant light of theology
and religion. The writer of the Fourth Gospel had only to
identify the idealised Jesus of history with the Alexandrian
Logos, in order to inherit the rich legacy of doctrinal divinity
which had arisen from the contact of Platonic thought with
pious Jewish feeling.

We must not, however, suppose that the Fourth Evangelist
borrowed directly from Philo, with whose writings he was
probably unacquainted, or indeed from any Platonic philosopher
of Alexandria. It has been well suggested 2 that the Christian
doctrine of the Logos may have been developed almost in
independence of Alexandria by a school or group centring in
Ephesus. In all the great Greek cities of the East there was
a rich soil for the planting of philosophic doctrine. To our
view Alexandria shuts out all other Hellenistic schools of
philosophy ; yet such schools existed in many places. At an
earlier date than that of the Fourth Gospel, in another work
connected with Ephesus, the Apocalypse,3 we find a hint at
the Logos theory in the phrase " The Word of God," which
is applied to the many-named rider on the white horse.

The Fourth Evangelist, as we have seen, seems not to
accept the tale of the supernatural birth of Jesus. To him
it probably savoured of materialism. More intellectual and
better educated than his predecessors in the writing of the
Master's life, he laid aside, in this as in many other cases,
narrative for doctrine. Thus he took his start not from any
fact, real or supposed, of the world of sense, but from the world
of ideas. We may, however, doubt how far he intends us to

1 Philo, / ' oj \toaee.
- By M. Sabatier in the Rev. dt THist. dee Religions, L897, p. 178,

3 xix. 14.

THE INCARNATION 39'

believe that Jesus himself taught this doctrine in regard to
his own nature, for this Evangelist has bo perplexing a way of
mixing up his own comments with his text, and of transposing
all that he has to Bay into a peculiar subjective key, that it is
constantly impossible to determine what he means for narrative,
and what for reflections on the narrative.

It has, however, I d pointed out by theologians that

whereas the introductory passage of the Fourth Gospel proceeds
od the lines of Greek philosophy, yet in the rest of the work
the Jewish way of regarding the Incarnation is at least equally
prominent Here and there we have a phrase which savours
of the I schools, but the Johannine idea of Jesus as

perfect in obedience, and as one in will with the Father, is in
the main decidedly un-Greek. He rather indicates the path
future speculation ou the Incarnation than pursues that
path himself.

The writings of St. Paul are historically far earlier than
the Fourth Gospel. But we think it best to take the Gospels
first, and then the views of Paul. He, as was natural under
the circumstances, did not start like the Evangelists from the
human life of Jesus, but from the revelation of Christ made to
himself. His theories, taking their rise in an intellect trained
mainly in the schools of the Pharisees, have perhaps less in
them of Hellenic philosophy than have the views of the Fourth

ngelist. Yet it is certain that so keen and restless an
intellect, and so ready to assimilate ideas as that of St. Paul,
could not remain closed to the Hellenistic notions rife in the
atmosphere of Tarsus, where there was at the time a notable

,1 of Stoic philosophy. The waves of Platonic influence

led him also.

The Christologic doctrine of Paul, no less than that of the

Fourth Evangelist, has speculative roots in the soil of Platonism,

iallv in tin- doctrine of ideas, as well as in the national

beliefs of Judaism. He maintains that Christ, though he came

in tin- flesh, was pre-exi^tent before his human life, and exalted

r it. Through him in the beginning God made the world :
a near approach to the doctrine of the Logos. He took our
nature, in order by his death to make atonement between God
and us. He was the very image of the Father. "At the

392 EXPLORATIO EVANGELICA

same time the Old Testament monotheism is strictly adhered
to by Paul : God is the absolute cause and end of all existence,
including that of the Son, who has in God his head, is conscious
of being, as the Father's possession, bound to serve him, and
indeed, after the completion of his work, will be subordinate
to him in such a way that God alone will be all in all." 1

The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews starts from
another point in his Christologic doctrine. He does not, like
the Fourth Evangelist, find in the human life and the teach-
ing of the historic Jesus a manifestation of the light and the
reason of God, nor does he, like Paul, dwell primarily on the
mystic union between the believer and his exalted Head. He
thinks of the idealised Christ, in the first place, as the high
priest and representative of the human race, and the great
mediator between God and man. He sees in all the Jewish
economy of sacrifice a foreshadowing of what is to him the
central fact of the world's history, the death of Jesus on the
cross. This one offering is a full and sufficient atonement
for the sins of the world ; and after it Christ sits for ever
at the right hand of the Father to make intercession for man-
kind. The writer of the Epistle is in the main a follower of
Paul ; yet he is a man with the originality of genius, and the
third founder of Christologic belief.

But in his case, as in so many others, sublime truth is
mixed with fancy and deformed by intellectual aberration.
Not content with proclaiming the priesthood of Jesus Christ,
he has to find for that priesthood a prototype in the Jewish
Scriptures, and finds it in Melchizedek, a figure so fleeting
and vague in the mythic history that it lends itself to ampli-
fication and mysticism. " Thou art a priest for ever after the
order of Melchizedek " seems to have floated, as detached
sayings will, in the mind of the writer, and to have appeared
to him a providential forecast of the relation of the Christian
to Jesus Christ.

The passage from the Jesus of history to the Christ of

theology was the greatest step in the intellectual history of

the Church. Hitherto, Jesus had appeared as the Jewish

Messiah and a great religious reformer; henceforth he waa

1 Pfleiderer, Hibbert Lectures, p. f>G.

THE INCARXATIO.X \ \

raised as tli'' embodiment in earth ami iii heaven of tin-
love and the wisdom of God. liaised above rare, unconfined

by limits of time or space, the head <>f the Christian Church
had passed from earth t>> heaven t" become the source of the
divine inspiration in the Church.

But all the early Christologic doctrines would seem to
many modern Christians imperfect. That the Lord was pre-
existent and an agent in the formation of the world, and
that he now reigns at the right hand of God, and inspires
the Church upon earth, are doctrines very far short of those
which have ordinarily been current among orthodox Christians.
The general views of the early writers have been thus summed
up by the masterly pen of Prof. Harnack.

" There were as yet no such things here as ecclesiastir.il
doctrines in the strict sense of the word, but rather con-
ceptions more or less fluid, which were not seldom fashioned
ad hoe. These may be reduced to two classes. Jesus was
either regarded as the man whom Cod had chosen, in whom
the deity or the Spirit of God dwelt, and who, after being
tested, was adopted by God and invested with dominion
(Adoptian Christology); or Jesus was regarded as a heavenly
spiritual being (the highest after God), who took flesh, and
again returned to heaven after the completion of his work
on earth (Pneumatic Christology}. These two Christologies,
which are strictly speaking mutually exclusive, — the man
who has become a God, and the divine Being who has
appeared in human form, — yet came very near each other when
the Spirit of God implanted in the man Jesus was conceived as
the pre-existent Son of God. Yet in spite of all transitional
forms the two Christologies may be clearly distinguished."1

Until late in the second century, nay, until the time of
Athanasius, the doctrine of the divinity of Christ, as a part
of the doctrine of the Trinity, was not fully formulated. We
may trace the first budding of that doctrine in the Epistle
in the Colossians, written either by Paul or by a disciple of
Paul. It went on growing and varying from writer to writer.
Put few indeed of the writers of the second century will
appear, if read critically, to hold the Trinitarian doctrine in
1 DogmengeschicJUe, i. 185. Trans, i. p. 190.

394 EXPLORATIO EVANGELICA

this matter. It seems that something different prevailed,
even in the Church of Rome, till the end of the second
century. For three hundred years the person of Christ, like
that of his mother, was constantly growing in dignity, and
strict monotheism giving ground before a doctrine which
finally threw the Supreme Deity far into the background,
and practically superseded him so far as this world was
concerned, by a Son and Vicegerent.

In this statement there may seem, to some readers, an
unpleasant note of subjectivity, as if the process in the Church
were a mere human growth without relation to reality. I
must correct the impression by referring to the principles
of previous chapters. We cannot accept the statement of
theologians that absolute and eternal fact, in regard to the
nature of Christ, was being revealed to the Church, since
human faculties are not capable of ascertaining or of receiving
knowledge save of the relative. But we can say with con-
fidence that it was the continued inspiration of the Christian
society, its ever -renewed experience of spiritual realities,
which impelled it in the formation of Christologic doctrine,
though at the same time there were mingled with the working
of the divine idea baser motives of all sorts : jealousy, love
of domination, intellectual pride. On the whole, and regarded
broadly, we must regard the formulation of Christian doctrine
as a divinely ordained process. And that the doctrine should
be set forth as absolute and eternal truth was a necessary
result of the existing intellectual conditions.

We are so much accustomed to read in a Trinitarian light
the Apostles' Creed, and such formula} as that of the last
verses of Matthew, " the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost,"
that it requires some little effort of the mind to realise that
the phrases need not have implied to their first formulators
-mil meaning as we read into them. But the effort must be
made, if we wish to penetrate to the facts of history. Paul, for
example, speaks frequently of the Son and of the lfol\ spirit;
yet, as we have seen, he proves, by using such language as " then
3hall the Son also be subject unto him that put all things
undei him" that he would vigorously have rejeeted tlic Athan-
asiao formulas.

77/A" LXCARXATIiKX 395

It is .1 aoteworthy fact thai the doctrine of the Trinity, as
formulated by Athanasius, was a direct piling together of con-
tradictories. Ami any attempt to Boften those contradictions
by systematic arrangemenl or explanation was almost certain
to end in heresy. Finally the Creed Qu/ieungue mil was

ted "lit of contradictions, and piled like a great wall across
the path of any further attempt at systematic thought on the
subject <>f the Trinity. Such phenomena ran scarcely he ex-
plained by those who regard religious truth as a thing to be
searched out by intellect. But those who, like the writer of
these pages, believe doctrine to be properly the embodiment of
religious experience, will readily see that two views which are
contradictory of one another may yet each of them represent
true fact of religious experience. Yet the Athanasians on their
side were mistaken when they supposed the truth of their
creed to be more than relative. Like all creeds it was relative
to its surroundings. And since the surroundings have changed
it has become in that form unfitted for existence. This is
indeed generally felt.1 The Reformed Church of France has
given up the Quicunqw milt. And in England, though it is
recited at certain festivals in the Anglican Churches, it is a
cause of stumbling to many.

It is easy to perceive the value to the age in which they
arose, and to the surrounding atmosphere of Hellenism, of the
theological theories as to the Incarnation. To the rise of
Christianity they were necessary: without them the Christian
faith would not have attained the dominant position which was
necessary to it in order that it might save the world, first from
destruction by the arms of the barbarians, and then from ruin
by the vices which conquest introduced among the conquerors.
The great doctrines of Christianity were also indispensable to
the foundation of modern society. Their historic justification
is complete, and those who believe in the divine inspiration
of history cannot fail to regard them as inspired. It is natural
and legitimate to go even a step further; and to see in the
philosophy of Plato and the speculation of Philo divinely

1 The doctrine of the Trinity, writes Dr. Hort, " has been killed, one fears, by
that hapless Quicwnqw vult, and its substitution of geometry for life." — Life of
F. J. A. Hort. ii. HO.

396 EXPLORATIO EVANGELICA

controlled preparation for the advent of Christian doctrine.
The preparation of organs for functions as yet undeveloped is a
process which may be discerned everywhere in history ; perhaps
not by the light of mere science, but by combining reason with
sympathy and imagination.

I must venture, in accordance with the plan already set
forth, to follow this slight historic sketch with a brief analysis.
The necessity for formulating some doctrine of the Incarnation
existing for us as it has existed for Christians of all past ages,
it remains to be seen what bounds are set by the progress of
modern thought to our theory of Christology. Its basis must
be with us the same facts and experiences of life as originated
the doctrine among early Christians ; but our mental atmosphere
is so different from theirs that it is most unlikely that the
doctrine should take the same form of expression.

The most notable difference between ancient and modern
philosophy lies in the development of the doctrine of the will.
The ancient views of the Incarnation, as we have seen, centred
in the doctrine of the Logos or reason of God as revealed to
man. But modern views of the Incarnation will naturally
revolve about the centre, not of reason, but of will. If the
will of Jesus was in perfect harmony with that of the Father
in heaven, that would at once constitute an Incarnation, and
enable us, as it were, to see the divine will acting under human
conditions, and yet remaining divine.

It is thus natural that thoughtful theologians of modern
times should dwell not so much on the miraculous powers of
the Founder, and not so much on his participation in the
divine knowledge, as on his sinlessness, and his perfect
obedience to the will of God. It is obvious that this view
cannot be based on historic testimony. It is proverbially
difficult to prove a negative ; and our accounts of the life of
Jesus are so Blight that it is difficult to prove from them even
positive points in regard to the character of the Founder. No
doubt it may easily be maintained thai in nunc of the events
of the life of Jesus, as known to us, is there an element of sin :
because, in the few cases in which the ethical character of one
of his doings might seem doubtful, as in the cursing of the
barren fig-tree, we may well suspect some inaccuracy in the

THE ISCARNATION 397

unto. Bui the assertion of the perfect obedience of
Jesus goes far beyond all historic evidence into the realm of
doctrine It is a tin-sis not of the understanding, but of the

will and tin- heart. Yet it is not entirely satisfactory without
amplification' One may readily perceive that at bottom this
doctrine is in some ways rather Buddhist than Christian in
character. According to the earliest Christian teaching, virtue
is aot merely the absence of evil will, but the presence of a
will in union with the divine. Personality is a sacred
tiling. "Our wills are ours to make them thine"; but
conformity to tin' will of God does not make our wills cease to
be, but, on the contrary, gives them new energy and exaltation.

A critic in our day has to find a middle course between
two extremes. He cannot accept the doctrine of the
miraculous biiih without allowing his intellect to take, in
relation to Christian history, a line which he would repudiate
in dealing with other history. And he cannot entirely give up
tbf doctrine of the Incarnation without great spiritual loss, nor
without doing injustice to the facts of the rise of Christianity,
and its present existence as the religion of the civilised world.
Between these two extremes there are many ways which have
been and may be taken.

I by no means venture to condemn the garments which in
times past the idea of the Incarnation has assumed. Nor
would I at all imply that to the majority of people in our own
days such garments are unnecessary. There are doubtless
many to whose faith an acceptance of the miraculous birth is
essential. And to all, the idea unembodied in some kind of
doctrine would be very difficult to grasp. So Ion" as

istians differ in intellectual capacity and in education —
nay, so long as they differ in age and sex, — they cannot be at
one in such matters as these. In every religion there has
always been a variety of views, exoteric and esoteric : the
belief of the many and that of the few. This cannot be
altered. But what is possible is that the few should lay aside
intellectual scorn, and welcome the true idea under any out-
ward seeming, and that the many should be willing to learn
the distinction between essence and accident, and to tolerate
historic scepticism and doctrinal reform.

CHAPTER XXXI

THE ATONEMENT

The historical basis of the doctrine of the Atonement is, of
course, the death of Jesus Christ on the cross. As a real fact
of history, this death is probably disputed by no one. Tacitus'
testimony, " Christus, Tiberio imperitante, per procuratorem
Pontium Pilatum supplicio adfectus erat," would be accepted
by the most sceptical. But of the circumstances of the
crucifixion it is extremely difficult to find satisfactory evidence.
The various narratives in the Gospels bear the marks of the
terror and despair which had seized on the disciples, and
made them quite unfit to be witnesses of facts. Moreover,
our accounts cannot, on any sound historical principles, be
reconciled one with another, the seven words on the cross
being a mere arbitrary collocation. But however clear and
consistent our accounts of the death of our Founder had been,
they could not, of course, have established the Atonement
as a historic fact, for it belongs not to the realm of matter and
sense, but to that of spirit and of inner experience.

It may well appear strange that the early church, which
loved to surround the daily life, and especially the birth of
Jesus, with an atmosphere of miracle, has made no miracle of
his death. Such attempts have been made in various schools,
but they have never become a part of received doctrine.
Cerinthus held that when Jesus of Nazareth was seized by the
Jews, who intended to bring him t<> death, the heavenly
Christ who was with and in him departed to heaven, leaving
the mere mortal and human pail of the Redeemer to suffer

THE ATONEMENT 399

torture and death. An attempt in an almost diametrically
opposite direction has been made by Dr. Dale in his work on
the Atonement? This writer thinks that in the Bufferings of
Christ upon the cross there was something supernatural: a
grief passing that of death, and not disproportioned to the sin
of mankind. Unable to understand how Jesus could thus
suffer in prospect of a death which was but to release him
from the prison of a mortal body and lead him into eternal
glory, Mr, Dale has suggested a miraculous pouring upon

ufferer of the untold miseries of man for countless a
These views, and many others, have beeu suggested in
pious minds by the difficulty of reconciling the profound
mental agony which is reflected in our accounts of the
crucifixion with the divine nature of the sufferer. But such
a work of reconciliation is perhaps rendered unnecessary by
the doubtful historical value of the evangelical accounts of the
d sath of the Master. The death by crucifixion was one of the
most cruel ever invented: an excruciating torment prolonged
until the sufferer died of the pain. Acting upou a very
litive and delicate organisation, such as that of Jesus, the

;\- would be such as few can conceive. But the nature of
any mental and spiritual anguish which may have gone with
bodily pain has beeu, uo doubt wisely, hidden from the eyes
of men.

In the early Eoman Creed the death of Jesus is mentioned
only in the phrase, "crucified uuder Pontius Pilate," which
might be a translation from Tacitus. At the time when that

d came into being mere historic fact was regarded as
proper matter of faith, as was natural when history was
commonly constructed on a dogmatic basis. But in the later
and more developed Nicene Creed there are added two words
which introduce a great change, and show a juster appreciation
of the nature of faith : the words,/"/' us. These words embody
the doctriue of the Atonement, which had arisen among the
earliest Christians, and finds expression in the Epistles of
St. Paul. But this element, for us, clearly does not belong to
history, but to doctrine.

In dealing with such great Christian doctrines as that of
1 P. 58, etc.

4oo EX PL OR A TIO . E VA NGELICA

the Atonement, painful indeed would it be if we approached
them with the notion that unless we could find in Scripture or
in the writings of the Fathers justification for them, they must
be regarded as unauthorised, misleading, and false. It is very
different to approach them with the strong conviction that
they are justified by fact. Whatever criticism may show
in regard to them, it can never show that they are
wholly false, for much of their grounds is not specu-
lative, but practical : we know that they have been justified in
the experience of thousands. It is not the doctrine of the
Atonement which is on its trial, but only our criticism.
Before us stands a great fact, which we are obliged to try to
explain ; but if our explanations are not successful, the fact is
in no way affected. We endeavour to measure the height of
a lofty mountain ; if we estimate its height far below the
reality, the mountain does not suffer ; it is only our instru-
ments which are proved insufficient or our calculations
defective.

We must first sketch in the briefest and most insufficient
fashion the outlines of the history of the doctrine of the
Atonement, which begins in the remotest past.

Even among savages we find a conviction that the way
between man and his deities is not an easy way, that man is
apt to lose that way to his own suffering, and can only regain
it by patience and self-denial. In particular, as Mr. Frazer
has well shown, among tribes at the lowest stage of culture
there are ceremonies of religious origin, connected with the
attainment of puberty, which are very severe and painful to
go through. Among Australians and other savages these
trials sometimes bring men to the neighbourhood of death.
Only through such Bufferings and tortures can they grow into
a due relation with the divine powers with which their tribe is
allied. Crisis and suffering are necessary before the best life
of even a savage can be suitably lived, and before a harmony
with spiritual powers can oust discord.

From the sense of a relation, sometimes confiding, some-
times strained and fear - inspiring, between man and the

unseen powers, springs among savages the institution of

lifice, the mOSl primitive and fundamental of all acts of

THE ATOJVEMEA 1 401

religious cultus. And from the first institution of sacrifice,
onwards to our own days, we bave a regular and progressive
evolution of cull and of doctrine. In Chapter XXIX. I spoke
of sacrifice as of three kinds: donatory, piacular, and mystic.
And on tlif Christian doctrine of the Atonement all three
kinds have left traces ; but one kind, the piacular, is in a
more special sense its origin. I sketched the way in which
the notion of ii "life for a life" was, in the course of religions
history, gradually refined and raised, until it was worthy to be
received as one of the main beliefs of Christendom. I need
not here repeat these views. What remains is to consider
the doctrine of the Atonement in relation to the earliest
thought of Christianity.

The idea is one which inspires many of the writings of
the "New Testament, and which seems to have been one of the
earliest and most widely spread of Christian beliefs. In the
Epistle to the Hebrews we read that Jesus was "manifested to
put away sin by the sacrifice of himself." In the Fourth
I rospel and in the Apocalypse, Jesus is spoken of as the Lamb
of God, slain to take away the sins of the world. But the
idea of the Atonement is in a special degree connected with
the Epistles of St. Paul.

The true nature of the Pauline doctrine is very difficult
to determine, because it is conveyed in language steeped in
Rabbinical methods of thought. A learned commentator who
studied that language in the whitest of lights might find it
not easy to interpret. And how seldom do commentators
carry a white light! Usually they are theologians, committed
on the one hand to the formulas of their own Church, and
committed on the other hand to the recognition of the binding-
nut hority of the writings of St. Paul. The natural and inevit-
able result is that they endeavour to make St. Paul's words
confirm the doctrines of their own school ; and as those words
are the fervent expression of passionate feeling, and not
consciously adapted to the formulation of a creed, it is very
to find in them, within certain limits, any doctrine which
the investigator wishes to find. Many theologians use the
Pauline writings, not as a telescope for the discernment of
early Christian feeling and theology, but as a mirror wherein

26

402 EX PLO RATIO EVANGEL1CA

to see the reflection of their own faces. I am not greatly
blaming them for not escaping from a tendency which none
of us can wholly throw off, but merely accounting for the
difficulty of ascertaining the true Pauline doctrine on any subject.

In the writings of St. Paul we do not find historic and
doctrinal statements distinguished : they are mixed together
in a way very natural at the time, but confusing to the modern
reader. The Atonement of Christ sometimes presents itself to
him as a consequence and a corrective of the sin of Adam.
As Adam sinned, and all his descendants in him, death con-
quered the world ; and the self-sacrifice of Christ redeemed
the world from death. God inflicted the penalty of death on
one who had not deserved it, and in virtue of his merit
transferred his righteousness to his followers, and liberated
them from the curse. On this view we have only to observe
that the fall of Adam was not historic fact, and the transference
of sin and righteousness from person to person, as transfer and
not as inoculation, is contrary, not only to our notions of
justice, but to all moral possibilities.

This notion of transference was, however, quite familiar
to Jewish Rabbinical speculation. Dr. Edersheim writes,
summing up such views,1 " Did not Israel possess the merits of
' the fathers,' and specially that of Abraham : itself so valuable
that, even if his descendants had, morally speaking, been as
a dead body, his merit would have been imputed to them?"
Again,2 " If Abraham had redeemed all generations to that of
Rabbi Simon, the latter claimed to redeem, by his own merits,
all that followed to the end of the world : nay, that if
Abraham were reluctant, he (Simon) would take Ahijah the
Shilonite with him, and reconcile the whole world." When
one turns to Jewish Rabbinic lore, the result is usually to
make the utterances of Paul more intelligible, and to make
the utterances of Jesus more profoundly original.8

But Paul lias another view which he mixes up with the
story of the Fall, yet which comes from quite a different source.

1 Life and Times of Jesus, i. 84. - Ibid. i. r>40.

a The reader may consult with advantage Weizsaoker's Apostolic Age, i. 160,
.- 1 1 1 < 1 Pfleiderer's Paulinism, i. 91 and foil, It is an immense ^rain to have works
like these in English rendering.

THE ATONEMENT 4°3

Men are prone to sin because they are fleshly, uot spiritual
"The flesh is the expression of the power of sin in the natural
life; it appears as the source of all kinds of sin, and its might
consists, qoI merely in the inertia which opposes the demands
and impulses of the spirit, but in an active resistance to the
spirit, and even to God."1 But through being buried with
Christ and rising with him into a new life we may break
the power of the flesh and of sin, and partake of the life
of holiness. The notion of the inherent badness of the flesh
may perhaps have arisen on Persian soil, but it entered
deeply into the beliefs of all the mystic schools of religion in
the pre-Christian age. And each of these schools knew of
some saviour or redeemer who guaranteed to his followers
liberation from the flesh, and a blissful hereafter. But in
dearly all of them the pure germ of spiritual faith was buried
under the weight of magic and superstition. Paul's concep-
tion of the life of the spirit was incomparably higher than
theirs, and the source whence, by a divine contagion, the divine
life has flowed in upon tens of thousands of believers.

Thus the Jewish or historic element in the Pauline doctrine
of Redemption was little more than the husk. The mystic
doctrine of the life of the spirit was the kernel, whence sprang
the tree of religion.

The Pauline views of the Atonement have, as is well known,
served as a basis for vast subsecpuent structures of divinity.
With Augustine the doctrine set out on a new career. Anselm
developed it on the basis of the analogies of Roman law. By
Luther and the great Protestant theologians it has been taken
as a corner-stone of the vast construction which is sometimes
termed the "scheme of salvation." Like the women of Theo-
critus, who knew all about the marriage of Zeus and Hera, they
are will aware of the purposes of God when making the world,
and of tin.- meaning of all God's doings with the sons of men.
I ufortunately in our days all constructions of this kind have
to encounter the pertinent question, " How do you know?"
and at the touch of scepticism they fall asunder like a house
of cards.

The doctrine as stated formally, both in the Articles of the

1 Weizsacker, op. cit. i. 157. 2 Advniazuscc, i. 64.

4o4 EXPLORATIO EVANGEL1CA

Church of England and the Westminster Confession of Faith, has
the great misfortune to be based, explicitly and expressly, on
supposed historic fact. It declares that in consequence of the
sin of Adam all men passed into a state of condemnation, from
which they, or at least some of them, were rescued by the
voluntary death of Christ, who thereby ransomed us, and re-
stored us to God's favour. Now, of course, many assertions as
to facts of past history can neither be proved nor disproved.
But the story of the fall of Adam can be very clearly disproved,
to any one who understands the nature of historic evidence ;
our history of mankind going back now to a far greater
distance than the professed history of Genesis, and being
entirely inconsistent with it. And if the Fall passes away
as an objective fact of history, what becomes of the Re-
demption, which, historically regarded, is but its supplement
and corollary ?

But though our formularies remain, our beliefs are altered.
No educated person now believes in the Fall as historic fact,
But a very large body of Christians refuse to accept the logical
consequence of this rejection, and persist in still holding to
Redemption as historic fact. They give up the cause but
retain the effect : give up the historic breach between God and
man, but retain the historic healing of the breach. Yet surely
if the one event is removed from the fabric of history, the
other in consistency should also be removed.

Nothing could better prove the persistent vitality of the
idea than the fact that every age is constantly endeavouring in
some fresh way to clothe it with words, and to embody it in
some intellectual system. Clearly it is the duty of our time
also to find it a fit, intellectual expression. But in doing so we
need not too closely follow the methods of our fathers. In the
age of scholastic theology the schoolmen tried to render the
idea in the language of the Aristotelian philosophy. In the
age of the Reformation they tried to form a scheme out of
texts of Scripture taken at pleasure, in the belief that all
Scripture was the direct word of God. In our day these re-
sources arc closed to us, or at least partly closed. A 2>ri*>ri
theology, like a priori metaphysics, has gone down before i!i«'
critical method in philosophy. Texts of Scripture can no

THE ATONEMENT 405

lougei be cited without regard to their context or their purpose ;
uor in any case are we justified in assuming their infallible
truth. The method which is open to us is the consideration of

the tads 1^' the religious life, as revealed by observation aud as
recorded in history. Let us then briefly consider these, not
in the hope of reaching at once a satisfactory or permanent
result, but rather to illustrate a method, and to break ground
for future enquiry.

The permanent root whence spring successive theories of
Atonement is man's sense of sin, and his experience of its re-
moval. Whence sin comes is a difficult question, as to which
something has been said in the fourth chapter: why it is per-
mitted by God to exist we know not. But that it does exist
is one of the fundamental facts of ethics. We find but too
surely that there is in our will and heart something radically
opposed to that which we know to be good: a natural man,
who, in the language of Paul, is at enmity with God. The
facts in regard to sin and its forgiveness are stated in the
Fifty- ti 1st Psalm with a clearness and a fervour which leave
nothing to be desired. But in the ordinary course of life the
disease of sin is usually cured, not by direct appeal to the
higher power, but by inoculation from some soul which has
already attained to the higher life. And within the limits of
the Christian Church, not the visible Church, but the invisible,
the recognised source of the higher life is the Founder of the
Faith. As a matter of history, it may be said, Jesus died for
the world, into which he brought a new life, which grew among
men, and enabled society to survive the inner corruption and
the outward shocks with which the Eoman Empire was threat-
ened at the time. But the affirmation of the Atonement goes
far beyond the mere fact of history, into the realm of ideas.
Jesus had not long left the world, when St. Paul, in his own
language, was buried with Christ and rose again with him into
newness of life. And from that day to this the experience
has been daily and hourly repeated in the Christian Church.

To say with the Protestant that Christ died once for the
sins of all is to give the idea a historical setting. To say with
the Romanist that the sacrifice of Christ is perpetually
repeated in the Mass, is a materialistic rendering of the idea.

406 EXPLORATIO EVANGELICA

A more spiritual view is that of the Mystics, who hold that
Christ is always dying, whenever one of his followers learns to
crucify his affections and lusts, drowns selfishness in the love
of mankind, overcomes materialism by the life of the spirit,
and that Christ is forever being born in the world, when
character which reflects his makes its appearance among men.
According to this view the belief in the doctrine of the
Atonement is not in essence an opinion held as to the nature
of some event which took place nineteen hundred years ago,
and of which we have but imperfect and inconsistent accounts.
The Atonement of Jesus Christ is a work which began in his
life, culminated in his death, and has continually been repeated
all through the ages. And belief in that Atonement is a
process : the process whereby, in reliance on the divine grace
and by the aid of Christ, a man dies to self, to the base, to the
material, and begins to live to the spiritual and to God. It
does not seem to be of the greatest importance, from this point
of view, with what intellectual form a man clothes for himself
the eternal facts. The theories of Paul, of Augustine, of
Luther, or of the other great teachers in the Church, are all
adapted to various kinds of mind and degrees of education.
All no doubt contain some illusion ; but with illusion as such,
unless it become a hindrance to faith, there is no need to
wage war. With intellectual growth illusions drop away like
the husks of chestnuts, which have protected the growth of
the kernel, and, even when it is fallen, protect it from soilure
by the ground.

But no theory is eternal, and it does not even seem
necessary to receiving the benefit of the Atonement that a
man should connect it with the historical death of Christ.
The facts of contagion furnish us here with a good illustration.
The influence may be transmitted from one person to another
as well as derived from the ultimate source. It is as with
light. The light by which we live comes from the sun, but it
is by no means necessary that we should stand in his full rays.
The Church or members of it may, in like manner, reflect the
salvation of Christ even on those who do not consciously
venerate his name, or hold formed views as to his mission.

Tt is evident that in thus discussing the doctrine of the

I 111-. ATOiXEMEXT 407

Atonement we have also discussed the doctrine of Justification
by Faith, which is in fact but the inner side, the Bide turned
towards man, of the shield of which the outer Bide is the
doctrine of the Atonement But in our discussion a difference
between the point of view of this book, and that of most
Bvstems of Christian doctrine, can scarcely fail to be observable.
To the partisans of absolute religion the Atonement is an
external fact, and the doctrine of Justification by Faith is a
corollary of that fact. To the partisans of relative religion,
mi the other hand, the fact of experience is Justification by
Faith, and the doctrine of the Atonement is an intellectual
expression of it. It is not inferred from it as a logical
corollary, since such a method of argument would be illegiti-
mate Rather we should say that it is another way of
expressing the same fact: an expression which has usually been
thrown into a historical setting, but which with greater
propriety should be thrown into a mystical or ideal setting.
The setting indeed must vary with the intellectual tone and
circumstances of the successive ages ; but the fact is perpetual.

CHAPTEE XXXII

THE EXALTED CHRIST

The idea1 of the risen and exalted Christ is the life-blood of
evangelical Christianity. In all ages of the Church it has
been the source of the Church's energy and happiness ; and in
our day it has lost none of its force. Among Churchmen and
Dissenters alike it is a never failing source of inspiration.
Great religious movements still take their rise from it.
Christian faith and love are still rooted in it. "We must here
speak of it ; but we shall do so with all humility and
reticence.

It is clear that the idea could not inspire the Church until
the Church had lost the visible presence of its Founder.
While he was in the world he was the light of the world ; yet
the Fourth Gospel represents him as saying, " Ye have heard
how I said unto you, I go away and come again unto you.
If ye loved me ye would rejoice because I said I go unto the
Father." The doctrine of the exalted Christ is prominent
in nearly all the early Christian writings. But it is expressed
with most force and inspiration by three writers : the author of
the Epistle to the Hehravs, the Fourth Evangelist, and St. Paul.

In the Epistle to the Hebrews the risen Christ is spoken of
as the great High Priest, and the Mediator between God and
men, as one who ever lives to make supplication for men,
and to present their worship to the Father in heaven. The
writer insists that the sufferings and temptations of Jesus

1 I use the word idea, as usual, not in the sense of a mental notion, lmt of mi
energising power.

THE EXALTED CHRIST 409

Christ "ii earth especially qualify him to feel for the Buffering
and the tempted, and to make intercession for them.

In the Fourth Gospel a somewhat different line is taken.
The marvellous address of Jesus to his Apostles in chapters
xv. and xvi is filled with the idea of a spiritual communion
and onion between his spirit and theirs. " I am the vine, ye
are the branches. Abide in me, and I in you. As the
branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine,
do more can ye, except ye abide in me." There is no higher
Christian teaching than this. In no words written by man
does the Christian inspiration show more brightly. Yet as
historical Btudents we may gravely doubt whether such words
(Mine from the .Master's mouth while he was alive. Their
tense is essentially not the future, but the present. They do
not prophesy what will happen to the disciples, but express
the very tacts of their spiritual experience after the resurrection.
It is impossible to think that if Jesus had fully prepared his
disciples for his departure, his death would have come upon
them, as it evidently did come, as a surprise. It is not
historic speeches with which we have to do, but " visions and
revelations of the Lord." Whether there was some historic
basis for the parable of the vine and the branches, in words
spoken before the crucifixion, must remain doubtful. The
parallel parable of Paul, that of the head and the members, is

rally allowed to be the Apostle's own. But in any case
the particular form of the parable belongs to the time of the
risen, and not that of the historic, Jesus Christ.

In a marked degree the doctrine of the exalted Christ
belongs to Paul From his undoubted works, the Epistles to
the Romans, the Corinthians, and the Gcdatians, we learn how
Paul embodied to his intellect that Christian inspiration which
led him to so marvellous a life, to wisdom so deep though
twisted by Rabbinical learning, to so complete success as a
missionary. That inspiration was derived, as he intensely
believed, direct from Christ in heaven: the Master filled his
heart and directed his steps, and imparted to him energy and
love until he could say that he lived no longer; that his self
was dead, and that Christ lived in him. When he came to
reflect on this inspiration, and to try and explain to others its

410 EXP LO RATIO EVANGELIC A

nature, he first of all vehemently denied that it was the
mere reception of Christ's teaching and the following of his
example. This would be the knowing of Christ after the flesh,
which he earnestly repudiates : it would make him dependent
on the testimony of the Apostles, of which he is determined to
be free. It is Christ after the spirit, Christ living and exalted,
from whom Paul drew his inspiration.

In some of St. Paul's followers the clinging to the risen
Christ instead of to the historic Christ appears to have led to
antinomianism. Hence " heretical views,1 similar to those
which are controverted in the Epistles of John, involving an
abstract separation between the transcendent Christ and the
historical Jesus, by which Christianity was dissipated into a
metaphysical abstraction, and thus deprived, at the same time,
of its ethical content." Perhaps, in his intense perception of
his own side of the truth, St. Paul made this error too easy to
some of his disciples. Certainly to the Church of that time
the danger of the prevalence of such views was terrible ; for
then there was no generally accepted life of the Founder. In
our day, when the Gospels are in every house and read in
every church, and when the lives of Christlike Christians are
familiar to us all, it must needs have greatly diminished.
That it has disappeared we cannot say : among ill-instructed
Christians there is still a risk of antinomianism, of keeping
spiritual communion with unseen powers on a different level of
the life from conduct in the world. Put there can scarcely
be said to be risk that any important body of Christians
should adopt antinomian views to the serious danger <>f
society.

His divine inspiration is expressed by Paul in an extra-
ordinary wealth of phrases: "It came to me through revela-
tion of Jesus Christ," " When it was the good pleasure of God
to reveal his Son to me," "As many of yon as were baptized
into Christ did put on Christ," "God was in Christ, reconciling
the world unto himself." Prom the Epistle to the Philippians,
which may probably be Paul's, we may cite the phrase,
" Wherefore God highly exalted him, and gave unto him the
name which is above every name, that in the name of Jesus
1 Pfleiderer, Paulinism. Trans. Li. 162.

THE EX A I. TE l > C HRIS T 411

every knee should bow . . . and that every tongue .should
confess thai Jesus Christ is Lord."1

It is probably aft it tin- agf <»f the Apostles that the doctrine
of Christianity developed most fully in a mystic direction.
We have seen that in the Pagan tbiasi, and especially in the
mysteries attached to them, great stress was laid upon the
relation to certain divine beings with whom the votaries held
converse. To each thiasos the deity of the thiasos was <ju>ri]p
or saviour, as bestowing purity in life and hope in death. In
the Old Testament, Jehovah alone is the Saviour, who redeems
his people from their sins.'-' But this title of Saviour seems
early in the Christian era to have been applied to the
Messiah, as in Matt. i. 21, "Thou shalt call his name Jesus;
for it is he that shall save his people from their sins." But
the term Saviour is seldom applied to Jesus in the Gospels and
the genuine Pauline Epistles; in the somewhat later Pastoral
Epistles and 2 Peter it is frequently so applied. We may
probably see here traces of the growth of the Christian
mysteries as a counterpart to those of the Greeks. By the
writers, of whom Ignatius was most important, writers
especially showing kinship to the Greek mysteries, Christ is
thought of as Saviour, aconjp, in an intimate relation to those
who partook of the Christian mysteries. Dr. Wobbermin
writes,3 " For the comprehension of the deity of Christ in the
works of Ignatius, the key is wanting unless one takes as
Btarting - point the conception of Christ as deity of the
mysteries, as #eo<? a-corijp." There can be no doubt that
the Christian communion has been from very early times one
of the principal means of intercourse between the Head and
the members. Through it the sap of life has flowed from the
vine into the branches.

"Whatever phrases Paul may use in his passionate worship
of his Master, he keeps certain bounds. He is as strict
a monotheist as his Master, and anything like speculative
irinitarianism, as expressed in the phrases of the Athanasian

1 Phil. ii. 9. Revised Version.

2 Ps. exxx. 8 ; cf. Dalnian, U'orte Jesa, p. 244.

'/.in- Frage der Beeinjlussung des Urchristeniums durch das aniike
p. 107.

412 EXPLORATIO EVANGELIC A

Creed, is far from his mind. And neither does he himself use
direct prayer to Christ, nor does he recommend to his disciples
the use of such prayer. As Harnack observes,1 " As the
Mediator and High Priest, Christ is, of course, always and
everywhere invoked by the Christians ; but such invocations
are one thing, and formal prayer another." But, as was
perfectly natural, with time this distinction became obliterated.
Before long the custom of prayer to Christ instead of prayer
to God in the name of Christ came in among Christians, to be
succeeded later by prayer to the Virgin Mother and the Saints.
It was an evolution, the conquest of the Christian Church by
an idea : one of those ideas of which we have already spoken
as perhaps the most real and objective things with which
human experience has to deal.

According to our Gospels the Founder of Christianity gave
his followers explicit directions as to the manner in which they
were to pray. They were to address the Father in heaven.
Passages in the Synoptic Gospels give authority for addressing
the Father in the name of Jesus. But they give no counte-
nance to the notion that prayer may be addressed directly
to the Master in his exaltation. Nor does even the Fourth
Gospel, if we except the phrase (RV. xiv. 1-1), "If ye shall
ask me anything in my name, that will I do." Here, as stated
in the margin, many ancient authorities omit the word me, and
this gives a far better sense. We may compare Matt, xviii.
19, ' If two of you shall agree as touching anything they shall
ask, it shall be done for them of my Father which is in
heaven." The difference between these two phrases marks the
progress of the idea between the time of origin of the First and
that of the Fourth Gospel. The custom of addressing " Christ
as God " sprang up very early in the Church, but it was a
development, not part of the original doctrine of the kingdom.

Christian prayer, whether it be offered to God in the name
of Christ, or whether it lie offered to Christ direct, differs from
otheT prayer in being steeped in the person and character of
Christ. It differs from the prayer of the Theist or the Stoic

1 Dogmengeschichte, i. 174. Trans, i. 184. Mere ejaculations, like the death'

li of Stephen in Acta, or tl deluding aspiration of Revelation, are not

formal prayers.

THE EXALTED CHRIST 413

as the Christian doctrine of the Atonemenl differs from an
ordinary belief in the value of vicarious suffering. It is
prayer baptized into Christ, and full of his spirit. "To pray
in the oame of Christ," writes Mr. 6ore,] "means to pray in
Buch a way as represents Christ . . . that means thai we are,
however far off, expressing his wishes and intentions."

I quote from a recent work, Mr. Dale's Living Christ,2 a
passage which expresses the facts of communion with the
heavenly Master in Language so clear and forcible that I
cannot do better than repeat it. He writes of Christians:
"They have trusted in Christ for certain great and wonderful
things, and they have received great and wonderful things.
They have not perhaps received precisely what they expected
when their Christian life began, for the kingdom of heaven
cannot be really known until a man has entered into it; but
what they have received assures them that Christ is alive,
that he is within reach, and that he is the Saviour and Lord
of men.

" That they have received these blessings in answer to
their faith in Christ is a matter of personal consciousness.
They know it, as they know that fire burns.

" Their experience varies. Some of them would say that
they can recall acts of Christ in which his personal volition
and his supernatural power were as definitely manifested as in
any of the miracles recorded in the Four Gospels.

" They were struggling unsuccessfully with some evil
temper: with envy, jealousy, personal ambition, and could
not subdue it. They hated it ; they hated themselves for
being under its tyranny ; but expel it they could not. If it-
seemed suppressed for a time, it returned; and returned with
its malignant power increased rather than diminished. They
scourged themselves with scorpions for yielding to it ; still
they yielded. In their despair they appealed to Christ; and
in a moment the evil fires were quenched, and they were
never rekindled. These instantaneous deliverances are
perhaps exceptional ; but to those who can recall them
they carry an irresistible conviction that the living Christ has
heard their cry and answered them.

1 The Sermon on the Mowni, \>. 132. 2 P. 10.

4M EXPLORATIO EVANGELICA

" The more ordinary experiences of the Christian life,
though less striking, are not less conclusive. The proof that
Christ has heard prayer is not always concentrated into a
moment, but is more commonly spread over large tracts of
time. Prayer is offered for an increase of moral strength in
resisting temptation, or for the disappearance of reluctance in
the discharge of duties which are distasteful, or for a more
gracious and kindly temper, or for patience and courage in
bearing trouble, or for self-control, or for relief from exhausting
and fruitless anxiety; and the answer comes. It conies
gradually, but still it comes. We had lost hope. It seemed
as if all our moral vigour was dying clown, and as if nothing
could restore it. The tide was slowly ebbing, and we were
powerless to recall the retreating waters : but after we prayed
it ceased to ebb ; for a time it seemed stationary ; then it
began to flow ; and though with many of us it has never
reached the flood, the wholesome waters have renewed the
energy and the joy of life.

" Or wTe prayed to Christ to liberate us from some evil
habit. The chains did not fall away at his touch, like the
chains of Peter at the touch of the angel ; but in some
mysterious wTay they were loosened, and at the same time we
received accessions of strength. The old habit continued to
trouble us ; it still impeded our movements : but we could
move; we recovered some measure of freedom, and were
conscious that we were slaves no longer. There still remained
a mechanical and automatic tendency to the evil ways of
thinking, speaking, or acting ; but we had become vigilant and
alert, and were prompt to resist the tendency as soon as it
began to work ; and we were strong enough to master it. In
the course of time the tendency became weaker and weaker,
and at last, in some cases, it almost disappeared."

Classical examples of the communion of a Christian witli
his Master may be found in works like the Imitatio, or like tin'
Spriuilum Perfection/is of St. Francis. Continually this disciple
was having speech of his Lord ; and the replies to his prayers
took the most definite shape in his mind. He regarded desus
Chrisl ;is the direct source of his rule; and constantly sought
of him definite direction in the important affairs of life. A

THE EXALTED CHRIST 415

more modern instance will be found in the very remarkable
life of the missionary John <!. Paton.1 Ee records how once,
when he was oppressed with anxiety and trouble, there was
granted to him to see " in fair outline the form of the glorified
Jesus," and to hear words which bo encouraged and helped him
that all his difficulties vanished, and he accomplished the task
ael before him with case and great content of soul. And if
the evidence of saints and missionaries is suspect, abundant
evidence of the same kind may be found in the lives of poets
and statesmen and men of affairs.

Mr. Dale is not always more successful than the Fathers of
the early Church in discerning between fact and inference,
between idea and historic truth. Fur he afterwards proceeds
immediately from the facts of personal intercourse with the risen
( hi ist. to draw the conclusion that experience thus gained can be
used for the determination of events in the life of the historic
Jesus. Such a proeed ure, closely resembling that of the Fourth
Evangelist, however profitable in individual cases, is formally
illegitimate, and cannot lead to any real historical certainty.
When, however, writers such as Mr. Dale infer from the same ex-
perience that Christ is Lord in the moral and spiritual world, they
proceed in a manner which is less unjustifiable. For here
there is, perhaps, no more admixture of inference and theory
with experience than is absolutely necessary for its adaptation to
the realm of thought. The experience is real beyond question,
and the natural inference from it is beyond question a truth :
but is it the whole of the truth ? Here lies the difficulty.

It is not difficult to see what intellectual dangers arise even
in so simple inferences. We have already seen that in prayer
to God we find ourselves, in Newman's phrase, solus cum solo,
and that this very fact indicates that the attribution of person-
ality to God can only be made in a symbolic fashion. In prayer
to Christ we find the same characteristic, and we cannot but
see that, however real the communion may be, we must be
cautious as to the conclusions which we base upon it.

As we look down the history of the Church we shall find
that prayer among its members has been directed to many
names: to Jesus, to Mary, to saints and martyrs. And the

1 P. 386.

416 EXPLORATIO EVANGELICA

important thing in a prayer is not the name to which it is
addressed, but the spirit in which it is uttered. Among
barbarians words and names and formulae in prayer are
supposed to have a magic force. It is probably by a survival
of this feeling that many men even now consider the words of
a prayer of more importance than the motions of heart and
will, which give it all its value and reality.

The formation of doctrine on the ground of experience is, in
this matter, as in others already discussed, a procedure not
merely intellectual, but involving the practical faculties : is in
fact relative. The facts of the Christian life have been used
by the Church in all ages as a foundation for schemes of
Christology, in which various places have been assigned to the
Jesus of history and to the exalted Christ, Strictly speaking
these two belong to different realms of the intellectual kingdom.
And thus Christian wisdom has been continually employed in
the endeavour to construct a valid pathway from the one to the
other. No such pathway can have the simple and universal
validity of such statements as that a straight line is the shortest
way from one point to another. But in various degrees various
attempted modes of conciliation embody high truth, and tend to
the salvation of men.

This is a subject on which it is needless to dilate.
Perhaps comparisons may be suggestive. The two carbons of
an electric arc lamp do not touch ; electric force has to leap
from one to the other, and by the leaping, light and heat are
produced. Again, there is no logical connection between an
affection of the physical brain and a state of consciousness ;
the one belongs to the outer and visible, the other to the
invisible and conscious life. Yet on correlation of the two
is based all knowledge. In the same way Christian faith
must leap beyond verifiable experience before it can give
li'dit to the world. There is no demonstrable connection
between the Jesus of history and the Christ of Christian ex-
perience: yet on their correlation is based the life of the
Church. Spiritual experience must be interpreted by him
who experiences it in some way ; else it remains void and
undetermined. Commonly men interpret it in the lighl
either of metaphysics or of history, and the method of

THE EXALTED CHRIST 417

interpretation gives the key to the doctrines of churches or of
individuals.

It is in entire consistency with the psychological views
maintained in onr earliest chapters that we assert the fruitless-

of enquiry into the absolute and unconditioned existence
of the exalted Christ. Iii regard to the Deity we have
maintained that he can be known only as revealed in con-
sciousness, and only in relation to human experience. So
the exalted Christ can be known only in the experience of
( hristians. And the question what he would be apart from
Mich experience seems to be unmeaning. Those who believe
in the exalted Christ can easily justify their belief. But those
who do not accept this belief cannot by mere reasoning be
convinced of its validity. They must receive it, if they receive
it at all by an act of faith, an effort of will which passes
beyond the mere data of understanding.

The two things which may be reasonably asked with
regard to a religious doctrine are whether it has practical
objectivity and universal subjectivity. The doctrine before us
ertainly has the former of these marks; as regards the latter
there is less certainty. On the one hand it is not accepted by
the majority of mankind ; on the other hand it is claimed by
Christians that it is fit for universal acceptance. Similarly,
the greater part of Christendom accepts the exaltation of the
Virgin Mother ; but this Protestants reject.

The fact is that, however free we fancy ourselves in the
matter of belief, belief is in truth continuous from generation
to generation, save in great crises. All faith has a large
historic element : the impulses of the higher life are interpreted
in tin' light of history and of our surroundings. And there is
great risk in attempting to do away with the elements of one's
belief which are national or local, and not of universal accept-
ing e: only if they are set aside in order that a higher phase
of belief may be reached, the rejection is justifiable.

It may be well here briefly to sum up the results of these
very slight discussions on the great doctrines of Christology.
It will appear that in regard to each of the doctrines of the
Incarnation, the Atonement, and the Resurrection, we have a
basis of fact, partly historic and partly of experience, and on

27

4i 8 EXPLORATIO EVANGELICA

these bases doctrinal superstructures. Let us define (a)
historic fact ; (b) fact of experience ; (c) doctrine.

1. The Incarnation. Here the historic fact (a) is the
birth and life of Jesus ; the fact of experience (b) is that in
Christian worship, and especially in reading the Gospels, we
become aware of a nature at one with God ; the doctrine (c) is
that God was made manifest by Christ in the flesh.

2. The Atonement. Here the historic fact (a) is the
death of Jesus ; the fact of experience (b) is that Christians
of all ages have found that by partaking of his death they
find salvation ; the doctrine (c) is Redemption or Justification
by Faith in Christ.

3. The Resurrection. Here the historic fact (a) is that
after Jesus' death the disciples had communion with him ;
the fact of experience (b) is the possibility of such communion
in the later ages of the Church ; the doctrine (c) is the
exaltation of Christ as a Saviour.

As time passed, it became necessary to bring the idea of
the Founder, which was continually expanding and rising, into
relations with the idea of the Divine Personality. Thus the
views of God which we find in the Synoptic discourses were
thrust more and more into the background, and a new de-
parture was taken. Hence arose the doctrine of the Trinity,
as to which I shall speak in the next chapter.

CHAPTER XXXIII

THE HOLY SPIRIT

St Paul is the great authority for the doctrine that the living
< ihrisl is the source whence members of the Church derive
their life and their energy. The author of the Fourth Gospel
is the main source of the doctrine that all the virtues of the
Church are imparted to it by the Holy Spirit. He places in
the mouth of our Lord himself a series of statements, clear and
definite as regards the source of the inspiration of the Christian
community. He represents that the Founder, when about to
depart, thus encouraged his disciples : " It is expedient for
you that I go away, for if I go not away, the Comforter will
not come unto you ; but if I depart I will send him unto you."
..." When he, the Spirit of truth is come, he will guide you
into all truth." Whether such words were uttered by Jesus
is of course very doubtful : they are scarcely in his manner,
but distinctly in the manner of the author of the Gospel.
And it is best to take them as expressing the author's special
theory, his endeavour to put into intellectual form the influence
of the risen and exalted Christ. But the difference of ex-
pression between the theology of St. Paul and the theology of
the Fourth Gospel is not very great, nor of much moment if
religion be practically regarded.

In fact the Fourth Evangelist continues the lines of the
pre-Christian speculation which Philo also independently works
on. The Alexandrians had spoken of the Mediator between
God and the world sometimes as of feminine nature, the
Wisdom of God sometimes as of masculine nature, the Word

420 EXPLORATIO EVANGELIC A

or the Son. The Fourth Evangelist regards Jesus as the im-
personation of the Logos, and the Paraclete as the source or
channel of inspiration to the Christian Church after the
departure of Jesus. He did not adopt these views from Philo,
with whose works he was probably unacquainted ; but both
writers have common intellectual ancestors.

In the case of the Holy Spirit, just as in the case of Jesus
Christ himself, we have to beware of attaching more value to
tales of doubtful authority than to the facts of the religious
consciousness. For in the Gospels and the Acts, as they have
come down to us, certain appearances of the Holy Spirit under
the forms of time and sense are recorded. • When Jesus was
baptized, as all the Evangelists record, the Holy Spirit
descended upon him ; in the form, it is sometimes added, of a
dove. And on the day of Pentecost, when the disciples were
assembled, there was a sound as of a mighty wind, and the
Spirit fell upon each in the form of a tongue of fire, after
which they received the gift of tongues. "When, however, we
begin carefully to examine the records of these facts, we find
that those records are of an unusually unsatisfactory character.

It seems, from the words used by Matthew and Mark,1
that the appearance of the Holy Spirit to Jesus in the form
of a dove was to them a subjective vision : the words he saw
are suggestive, and that the sight was visible to others is in
no way expressed nor even implied. In the narrative of the
Third Gospel, by the omission of the words he saw, a more
objective character is given to the vision, as if it were a fact
visible to all ; but even in this case nothing is said which
compels us to consider that this was the intention of the
writer : his omission of one or two words of the traditional
version may have been due to other causes. In the Fourth
Gospel, on the other hand, John the Baptist is represented as
saying, " I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove,
and it abode upon him." In this case, too, a vision peculiar to
the Baptist seems to be implied; but the whole passage can
scarcely make any pretence to he historical, since the context,
in which these utterances of John are contained, contains also

1 Mark i. 10. Ami straightway coming up out of the water, he saw the
heavens rent asunder, and the Spirit as a dove descending n j ><>n him,

THE HOLY SPIRIT 421

phrases of early Christian theology, which could Bcarcely have
been uttered by the Baptist at the outset of his career.1 The
Apocryphal Gospels speak of a lighi appearing or a fire being
kindled on the occasion.

[fwe attempt, amid these conflicting accounts, to determine
what as a matter of history took place, we shall find ourselves
1 ompletely baffled. One school of critics may hold that we
have to suppose a vision seen by Jesus, paralleled by that of
Bzekial and by those of other ancient prophets, who introduce
them with the same simple phrase / saw, unconcerned with
the question whether the vision was subjective or objective. It
may suit the minds of some unimaginative persons to suppose
that a dove, a bird in Palestine very common and quite
familiar with man, did flutter about Jesus at his baptism.
But such a supposition is quite superfluous. It is noteworthy
that with Philo, who wrote before the Gospels were composed, a
dove is recognised as a symbol of the divine wisdom. The
enquiry for historic fact ends in a dead-lock.

In regard to the bestowal of the Holy Spirit on the early dis-
ciples we have two accounts, differing markedly one from the
other. The one is found in the Fourth Gospel, the other in the
book of Acts. In the Fourth Gospel it is recorded that Jesus
promised to his followers, in his last discourses, that the Holy
Spirit should be given them after his departure. And when, on
the evening of the Resurrection, the disciples were assembled with
shut doors for fear of the people, Jesus appeared among them, and
breathing on them said, " Receive ye the Holy Ghost: whose-
. er sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them ; and whose-
soever sins ye retain, they are retained." 2 This passage has had an
important history. On it the Church of Eome bases her claim
to the power of remitting sins. And in the Anglican service
for the ordering of priests it is also treated as the basis of
priestly authority, though the Anglican Church does not en-
courage the confessional, without which the power of absolution
is utterly crippled.

The descent of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost is

1 John i. 29. "The lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world."
There seems here to be an allusion to the Paschal sacrifice, which could only
have been uttered after the Crucifixion. '-' John xx. 22.

422 EXPLORATIO EVANGELICA

recorded by the writer of the Acts as coming to the disciples on
a different and a subsequent occasion, while they were gathered
together in one place. He represents the result of that descent,
the gift of tongues, as causing wide-spread interest and
astonishment at Jerusalem. As it stands the narrative is
clearly miraculous. But the letters of St. Paul enable us to be
sure that it is at least a highly coloured version. On this
subject I have said enough in an earlier chapter. We cannot
therefore but suppose that the character of the " gift of tongues "
on the day of Pentecost was entirely mistaken by the author
of the Acts : and this being so, can we trust him as to the
presence of the tongues of fire ? These bear a curious likeness
to the fire which, according to apocryphal authority, appeared at
the baptism of Jesus himself in the Jordan.

With the vast constructions reared on what must from the
historical point of view be called so slight a foundation, I do
not propose here to deal. But it is necessary to point out that
the whole passage which we have cited from the Fourth Gospel
is irreconcilable with the account of the descent of the Holy
Spirit, as given in the Acts. For if the disciples had already
received the gift of the Holy Spirit, why should they wait to
receive it formally on the day of Pentecost.

It appears then that the accounts of the appearance of the
Holy Spirit in visible form are not historically convincing.
But if we give them up, we do not therewith give up our
belief in the working of the Spirit of CJod in the human heart
and mind and conscience, which is a reality of experience to all
religious men. The tales wherein the experience had found
support passes away, but that experience is deeply embedded
in the facts of the spiritual life, and may still be embodied
in doctrine.

As we have already seen, in speaking of the Logos doctrine,
a doctrine of the Holy Spirit existed before the rise of Christi-
anity. In fact the divine Spirit, the divine Wisdom, and the
divine Word were three phrases used for speaking of the same
range of spiritual experiences in the Jewish Hellenistic schools.
To Philo the divine Wisdom is scarcely to be distinguished
from the Word. A descendant of these views appears in
Christian literature, when Jesus is represented as speaking of

THE HOLY SPIRIT 423

"My mother, tin- Eoly Spirit."1 When the Parthenon al
Adieus became a Christian Church it was dedicated, first to the
divine Wisdom and thru to the Virgin .Mary. The working of
God in thf world and in the souls of men was by the later
.lews personified in many ways, and the Christian doctrines of
the Word, of the Eoly Spirit, and of the Virgin Mother alike
had roots in these personifications.

The doctrine of the person of the Holy Spirit remained for
a Ion- time in the Church in a state of flux. "The concep-
tions about the Holy Spirit were cpuite fluctuating. Whether
he is a power of God, or personal, whether he is identical
with the pre-existent Christ, or is to be distinguished from
him, whether he is the servant of Christ (Tatian, Ovat. 13),
whether he is only a gift of God to believers, or the eternal
Son of Grod, was quite uncertain."- It was long afterwards
that mechanical formulae, such as those of the so-called
Athanasian Creed, attempted to give a scientific air to
doctrinal assertions, which it is fatal to regard as objectively
scientific. The value of the doctrine to Christianity arose
from the Christian baptism which it underwent. It came
to embody some of the most sacred experiences of the early
Church.

Let us turn from the outward appearances of the Holy
Spirit to the inward revelations, of which mention is made in
the New Testament. One of the simplest and most natural
mentions is put into the Founder's mouth in St. Luke's
Gospel,3 " If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts
unto your children ; how much more shall your heavenly
Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him ? " This is
the language of essential religion, fit for all times and places,
as appropriate to-day as when it was uttered or written. Here
we have touch of the eternal facts on which faith must be
built. But as we recede a little farther from the fountain-
head, we find the term Holy Spirit used with special or
exclusive reference to the Christian Church. Thus St. Paul,4
after reminding his Corinthian converts that they have become

1 In the Gospel of the Hebrews, as quoted by Origen.
- Harnack, DogmengeschicMe, i. 188. Trans, i. 197.
3 xi. 13. 4 1 Cor. vi. 15-19 ; xii. 3.

424 EXPLORATIO EVANGELIC A

members of Christ, proceeds immediately to speak of their
bodies as temples of the Holy Spirit. And he declares that
no man can call Jesus Lord, except by the Holy Spirit, He
regards the Holy Spirit, as does the Fourth Evangelist, as the
special vehicle of grace to the members of the Christian
Church, and not to those outside the Church.

And this restriction of the operations of the Holy Spirit
to Christians appears in a more definite and outward form in
the Acts, of course a later and far less trustworthy authority
than St. Paul's Epistles. In this book, the bestowal of the
Holy Spirit on converts appears as the sign of their admission
into the Church, and frequently accompanies baptism, either
following it, or, as in the case of Cornelius, preceding it. And
the results of the bestowal of the Spirit are spoken of as
externally visible, especially consisting in speaking with
tongues.1 Such phenomena are common features of religious
revivals ; we do not now connect them with baptism, since
infant baptism has almost superseded that of adults. But in
connection with what is now called conversion, and with
partaking of the Holy Communion, it is not rare to see such a
change of heart and purpose, accompanied by strong emotion
and passionate alterations of sorrow for sin and joy in forgive-
ness, as would have been termed by the piety of the early
Christians the bestowal of the Holy Spirit.

In some passages of the Acts we read of a more external
and arbitrary bestowal of the Holy Spirit. The gift of the
Holy Spirit is sometimes 2 not bestowed at baptism, but after
baptism by the laying on of the Apostles' hands, so that
Simon Magus asks from the Apostles that he also may have
the power that " on whomsoever I lay hands he may receive
the Holy Ghost.'' In this passage we have reached the
thaumaturgic view, that the gift of the Spirit of God or its
withholding rested in the hands of certain individuals. And
at a glance we Bee how far the feeling of the early Christians
has departed from acceptance of the noble phrase of the
Fourth Gospel,3 "The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou

1 (lost instructive is the whole aceount of the conversion of Cornelius,
Acts x. 44.

2 E.g. Acta via. 15-17. ■ iii. 8.

THE HOLY si' I KIT 425

hearesl the sound thereof, bul canst aot tell whence it cometh,
and whither it goeth: so is every one that ia born of the
Spirit."

The translation of the doctrine of the Spirit out of the
Bphere of true spirituality into that of mat dial ism may have
been at the time necessary, in order that Christianity should
ise lull power in a very imperfect world. Through being
thus materialised, the doctrine was fitted to become a justifica-
tion and a basis for the organisation of the early Church by
means of the system of apostolic succession. A crust of
outward observance was necessary to save the infant Church
from being crushed between the hard and prosaic Roman and
the fierce and fanatical Jew. But the tendency of modern
evangelical Christianity is to put, over against this hard and
sacerdotal conception, that of a divine power which has by
degrees, through all the ages, revealed God to man. Even
among savages we may find traces of a divine inspiration,
which makes them forsake the worse and choose the better.
The philosophers of Greece and the prophets of Israel alike
received revelations proceeding from the divine mercy and
goodness. But in Jesus Christ the divine influence which
had been flowing like streams in a thirsty land became
a full river. And since the death of the Master, that river
has flowed for his disciples, and been the life of the Church
visible and invisible. But divine inspiration, though fullest
in the Church, is no more confined to the Church than it was
in old days confined to the Jewish nation. " God is no
respecter of persons : but in every nation he that feareth him,
and worketh righteousness, is acceptable to him."1

It is necessary, at this point, to say a few words in regard
to the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. According to Prof.
Barnack, who in a matter of history is a very high authority,
the doctrine of "Three Persons in one Godhead," which is
not really accepted in the earlier creeds, was introduced into
the Creed under the influence of Greek metaphysics in the
fourth century. But it is more than likely that ultimately
it had not merely a philosophic source, but also one in
cultus, since in the Greek mysteries, which certainly largely

1 Acts x. 34.

426 EXPL0RAT10 EVANGELICA

influenced Christian doctrine, trinities of deities were commonly
accepted.

The theologians of the orthodox or victorious party-
acknowledged in their formulae a Trinity of Father, Son,
and Holy Spirit. But in cult and in practice there was
rather a Trinity of the Father, the Son, and the Virgin
Mother.

In the history of the Church the value of the doctrine has
arisen from the support and cohesion which it has given to
the great doctrines of Christianity : the Incarnation, the Atone-
ment, and the exalted Christ. It was thus thoroughly
Christianised, and turned from a metaphysical speculation, or
even a bit of Pagan mysticism, into the practical embodiment
of Christian inspiration.

Clearly it is by the incorporation of the doctrine of Christ
that the doctrine of the Trinity was baptized into Christianity.
And the doctrine of the exalted Christ rests, as we have
shown, on a basis of Christian experience continued through
all ages down to our own. Yet in this process of incorpora-
tion results were reached which, however necessary at the
time, have now become hindrances to faith. It was through
the doctrine of the Logos that the divinity of Christ was
established. And it was an essential part, historically, of the
Logos doctrine that, through the word of God, heaven and
earth were made. In the Jewish and Alexandrian philosophy
such a phrase would be quite unexceptionable ; and when we
read in the Epistles of the New Testament that " By the word
of Cod the heavens were of old," or that " The worlds were
framed by the word of God," * the phrases are quite free from
incongruity. But when in Christian theorising Jesus was
identified with the Logos of God, then the associations of the
phrase become misleading. Jesus Christ was God revealed in
man, not in the order of nature. Yet it was inevitable that
as Logos Jesus Christ should be regarded as architect of the
visible world, as we have it in the Nicene Creed, "by whom
all things were made." This confusion between the author of
nature and the human revelation of God does very much in

1 2 Peter iii. 5 ; Heb, xi. 3. Iii the Former case the word used is \6yos, iu the

latter firjfJ-a.

THE HOLY SPIRIT 4^7

our day to make ( Christian doctrine unacceptable to those
trained in tin- Bchoola of si fence.

If regarded from the abstract point of view, as meta-
physical truth, the doctrine of the Trinity will not bear
criticism: its value musl be practical rather than speculative.
The doctrine of the Trinity, regarded in the fashion in which
in the present work doctrines are regarded, can be no statement
of absolute truth in regard to the being of God as existing
out of relation to the world: all our words in regard to God
must either speak of him in relation to the world of conscious-
aess and experience, or else have absolutely no meaning. Nor
is the doctrine a mere logical deduction from texts of Scripture.
Scripture texts were neither intended by their writers to be
thus used nor are they, unless verbally inspired, fit to sup-
port a logical superstructure; nor is our reason, even if the
texts were verbally inspired, capable of logical procedure
outside the limits of experience. The doctrine is not, indeed,
entirely independent of history, since history is recorded
experience, but yet it is independent of all disputable historical

vtion, and in the main a summary of spiritual experience
in an intellectual form.

By many thinkers of modern times the doctrine of the
Trinity has been accepted, and many attempts have been made
by them to put it forth in a form suited to modern conditions
of thought. I must hold, in accord with the position taken up
throughout this book, that when such attempts consist in
a priori views, or are based on metaphysical reasonings, they
cannot have permanent value. But if they are based on the
data of experience, they may be not only legitimate, but even
useful to Christian thought and belief. So, with the utmost
diffidence, I venture to suggest that the experiential basis of
the doctrine may be the following :

To the Christian world God is revealed in three ways :

(1) in the order and law of the visible and intellectual worlds ;

(2) in the life and the work of Jesus Christ, both in earth and
heaven, and in ideal humanity ; (3) directly to the human
heart, by graces and inspirations. These seem to be the
foundations on which the intellectual structure is reared, a
structure varying from age to age, but never wholly detached

428 EXPL ORA TIO E VA NGELICA

from its basis in human nature and practical life. The
particular structure of which the Quicunque molt is the best
known account is by no means irreproachable. It doubtless
had its use in the history of the Church. But it is not in such
form that the doctrine of the Trinity can ever take real hold
of the modern world.

CHAPTER XXXIV

THE FUTURE LIFE

AMONG the most important of religious doctrines are those
which relate to the life beyond the grave. They are in the
highest degree ethical, and have a bearing upon life so direct
that to attack them is to attack in its most vital point the
religion to which they belong. But there is a necessary
weakness in their foundation. For whereas most of the
doctrines of which we have hitherto spoken rest upon a basis
of fact and experience, the doctrine of the future life cannot
immediately thus rest. For by the very nature of the case
our experience is confined by the bounds of the present life,
and is relative to existing conditions. We are unable to

inline, from the observation of facts, the nature of that
which necessarily lies outside experience. Nevertheless the
religion of experience may take up a position in regard to
the future life quite different from that of the mere Agnostic.
And experience is, in the end, the basis of the Christian
view.

We must begin by sketching in outline the history of the

i ine in the ancient world.

The belief in the persistence of human life beyond the
grave is found among almost all tribes of barbarians through-
out the world. Generally speaking, the future life is supposed
to resemble the past life in character, but to be a softened and
ghostly supplement to it. The dead man, whether he lives on
in the tomb or passes away to a distant realm of shadows, is in
character and essentials just what he was during life, but

43o EXPL0RAT10 EVANGELICA

incorporeal and endowed with certain faculties which the-
living man has not. The earliest literature of the Greeks and
of the Jews mirrors this stage of belief: its best poetical
expression is to be found in the Homeric account of the visit
of Odysseus to the world of shades, the prototype of which
the descents into Hades of iEneas and of Dante are copies.
The Cultus of the Dead, which was a marked feature of
ancient religious life, was based upon this view. Men brought
at stated seasons offerings to their dead ancestors, and expected
in return their help to protect the tomb where they were
buried, and the land which they had tilled.

In this primitive view, as in all the beginnings of religious
doctrine, there is little or nothing ethical. Yet the view was
eminently well adapted to receive an ethical turn. In ancient
Egypt we may best trace its transformation into a sanction of
morality. The Egyptians believed with great intensity in the
future life, and that its happiness or misery for individuals
depended upon the character of the deeds done in the flesh,
whether they were good or evil. There was a judgment of
souls, and only he escaped the jaws of the destroyer and
entered into bliss whose heart was righteous, who had not
oppressed the poor nor defrauded the helpless.

This doctrine of final retribution and a judgment of souls
was commonly accepted in Greece, though it belonged rather
to the mysteries of Demeter and the mystic theology of the
Orphic sects than to the civic religion. A close examination
of the remains of Greek poetry, philosophy, and art, reveals to
us a strong undercurrent in religion, in which was much of
superstition and magic, but also more ethical and spiritual
views in religion than usually appeared on the surface.

The philosophers, and especially Plato, dipped much into
this undercurrent, and embodied many of its beliefs and hopes
in the idealist and spiritual metaphysics of Greece. Plato, in
particular, developed on a mystic basis his doctrine of the
immortality of the soul. This conception of immortality is
essentially philosophic, and stands very far from the barbarian's
notionofmerecontinued existence, or even the Orphic cschatology.
The "rounds on which Plato seeks to establish it are felt by
every reader to be inadequate ; but the ethical passion which

THE FUTURE LIFE 431

he or his great master infuses into the conception is a sign of
the noblesl inspiration. And writer after writer and sect after
e started from the Platonic views and modified
them, or carried them further, or maybe opposed them.

In later Greece the barbaric, the Orphic,1 and the philo-
sophic views of the future life all existed side by side among
different classes of the community. All of these had under-
gone softening and civilising processes as the Greek race
worked out its destinies. To the barbaric belief in continued
existence a gentle and humane turn had been given by the
-rowing family feeling, the desire for a reunion in Hades,
which is reflected clearly in the beautiful sepulchral reliefs
which fill the museum of Athens, and which constitute the
most charming picture which exists of family affection. The
Orphic belief in rewards and punishments had been exalted
and made more spiritual by the increasing closeness between
the believer and his Saviour-Deity, to whom the votary trusted
for safety amid the perils of the last journey and in the final
judgment of souls. The philosophic doctrine of immortality
had become less vague and negative, more suffused with the
colours of hope, and with desire for converse with the gods.

We next come to the Jews.2 The Hebrew race was for
a long time content to trace the providence of God and the
workings of divine justice in the present life. It accepted the
ordinary barbaric notion of the future life, but without trans-
posing it into the ethical key. Meantime, and probably first
during that Captivity which was the redemption of the Jewish
race, there arose in the people an intense hope or conviction
of a future deliverance and a coming Messiah. At first the
deliverance and triumph were thought of as purely national ;
but by degrees a redemption and retribution of the individual
was thought of, and the facts of life soon suggested that for indi-
viduals such retribution could only reasonably be looked for
on the other side of the grave.

1 As to the Orphic views of Hades and their influence on early Christianity
see above, in the chapter on the Descent into Hades. A chapter on Greek ideas
as to the future life is included in my Sculptural Tombs of Hellas.

- In the following paragraphs I have done little more than abridge the views
of Schiirer, Jewish People ; Eng. trans, ii. p. 129 and foil. See also the fifth volume
of Kenan's Hist, du peuple d' Israel.

432 EXPLORATIO EVANGELICA

But the line of development of hope in death took, among
the Jews, a line quite different from that which it had taken
among the Greeks. It was strongly under the influence of the
sense of a national divine mission which was deeply rooted in
the Jewish conscience. So, instead of meditating on a personal
immortality, the Jews dreamed of a great crisis when, in the
days of the coming Messiah, a general resurrection of the dead
Israelites should take place, and when they should reign from
a purified New Jerusalem over the whole Gentile world. No
doubt there mingled with this national aspiration in the
Hellenistic age a hope of future bliss for the worthy, and a dread
of future punishment for the unworthy son of Israel ; but the
difference between Jew and Gentile was so profound that even
moral distinctions paled beside it ; and to the last the Jewish
hope was national as the Greek hope was individual.

I have had occasion more than once to speak of the energy
with which early Christianity absorbed the Jewish beliefs as to
the Messiah, the general resurrection, and the end of the exist-
ing world. The form taken by these beliefs in the early Church
is best exhibited for us in the book of Revelation. Some
modern writers think that the basis of this book was Jewish
rather than Christian ; that it is a Jewish Apocalypse modified
and supplemented by a Christian hand. But whether this be
the case or not, the vision of the New Jerusalem, with its twelve
gates inscribed with the names of the twelve tribes of Israel,
the earthly victories of the Messiah, and the millennial reign
of the saints, are thoroughly Hebrew. And Hebrew also is the
notion of those who had been slain for the word of God resting
under the altar of God, saying, "How long, 0 Lord, holy and
true, dost thou not avenge our blood on them that dwell in
the earth ? "

In tracing the Hellenic and the Jewish notions of the
future life into Christianity wc must begin with the Founder.
If we turn attentive eyes to his teaching on the subject, we
-hall see with some astonishment how little lie dwelt upon the
life beyond the grave, and how reticent is hia teaching, as
recorded in the Synoptists, in regard to it. Paley Inn- ago

niaib' this observation ; and it is not, I presume, denied

anywhere, though usually overlooked. And it' we examine the

THE FUTURE LIFE 433

where Bayings in regard to the future life are reported
of Jesus, many of them will appear to be not authentic. The

iboul the " many mansions " comes in St. John's Gospel
in the midst of a discourse which, however beautiful, is not at
all in the manner of Jesus, hut in that of the writer of the
pel The Btory of the rich man and Lazarus is obviously
a tale with a moral, a parable, the literal truth of which is not
implied any more than is that of the story of the Good
Samaritan. In St. Mark's Gospel there are but two or three
phrases set down in reference to the future life : "In the age
to come eternal life"; " When they shall rise from the dead
they neither many nor are given in marriage, but are as angels
in heaven " ; " He is not the God of the dead but of the living."
Some of the parables reported in the First Gospel contain some-
what more definite teaching, such as "These shall go away into
everlasting punishment, but the righteous into life eternal." This
phrase, however, belongs to the parable of the sheep and the
goats, in regard to which I have observed, in a previous chapter,
that it seems to have been recast by the early Christian society.
It is impossible to decide with certainty whether the phrases
here used, eternal life and everlasting punishment, really come
from the Founder of Christianity. They are so accepted by
current belief, and popular feeling accepts the former of them
as promising to Christians an eternity of personal happiness.
Our ancestors had no difficulty in accepting also the latter
phrase as implying that the wicked and the unbelieving were
destined to an eternity of personal torment. At the cost of
logic, modern feeling refuses to believe either that punishment
in a. future life can be eternal, or that Jesus can have spoken
of it as such. This feeling is no doubt a Christian and humane
development. It is impossible to think that a little balance of
good or evil in the life will determine the destination of the
souls of men to an eternity of personal happiness, or an eternity
of torment. But the goodness of this sentiment does not
justify us in dealing fast and loose with authority and with
creed. And such laxity has its revenges. People wTho reject
eternal punishment often reject with it all idea of future reward
and punishment, and even of divine justice, falling in this
matter to a lower level than Mohammedans and Buddhists.

2S

434 EXPLORATIO EVANGELIC A

They think of the divine Judge as a good-natured ruler who
will not deal hardly with any one. But it would be difficult
to name any serious religious teacher who has held this view of
the future life, utterly inconsistent as it is with all facts of
experience.

A well attested saying as to the future life by the Founder
of Christianity, is that in the world to come " they neither
marry nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of
God." This phrase again is strangely neglected by modern
popular Christianity, which often places in the next world a
mere continuation of the family life, too often selfish and
exclusive, of this world. No doubt the hope of finding again
relatives who have gone before softens, in many a household,
the bitterness of death and gives a sanction to family affection.
It may well be that in those family attachments which lie at
the root of so much virtue and so much character there may
be elements of a nature not to be destroyed by the fierce
furnace of death. But as a matter of history this hope came
into early Christianity not from a Jewish source, nor in all
probability from the Founder, but from Paganism. The
beautiful reliefs which adorn the Greek graves of all periods
from the sixth century downwards commemorate, beyond all
things, the lasting character of family affection ; and no doubt
Greek piety in many cases associated them with a reunion in
the realm of Hades. Antigone in the play of Sophocles ex-
presses a hope of rejoining her parents and her brother in the
future world. The Socrates of Plato in his last hours gives
utterance to the hope that he is about to join the assembly of
the good and the wise who had preceded him. But the
reported teaching of the Founder of Christianity is set in a
different key, and gives little countenance to the easy dreams
of popular optimism. The saying " He that loveth son or
daughter more than me is not worthy of me " has an applica-
tion in this matter.

But the great benefit which the doctrine of the future life
received through the teaching of the Founder of Christianity
was bestowed by his doctrine of divine Providence, by his
emphasis on the perfect confidence which we may feel in the
goodness of the Father in heaven. The disciple was taught

THE FUTURE LIFE 435

that "the hairs of his head were all numbered " ; that a divine

Providence watched his downsittinga and uprisings, and was

acquainted with all his ways: that in the daily walk of life
no Bmallesl thing can happen without divine knowledge and
control. Those on whom this knowledge was deeply im-
pressed by authoritative teaching and by daily experience,
became ready also to trust God in what is greatest. Socrates
could not believe that death was an evil, because at its
approach he received no monition from the inward voice
which always warned him when any evil was near. Similarly
the Christian was assured that death, which is appointed as
the lot even of the best and worthiest of our race, cannot be
an evil in itself; and that the Providence which watches
over life will also protect in death, and save from the sting

of it.

In the early Church the doctrine of the future life deve-
loped in two directions.

First, the Jewish doctrines of a coining of the Messiah, of
the resurrection of the body, and of a millennial reign of the
saints, were taken up into Christianity and greatly dominated
the imaginations of the early disciples. And second, the
mystic doctrine of the union of the believer with a divine
Redeemer, a union begun in the present and continued in the
future life, was by St. Paul and by the Fourth Evangelist
baptized into Christ, and became one of the mainsprings of
the Christian life. No doubt both views grew up together,
and were inextricably intermixed. Their radical inconsistency
one with another was not realised by the first disciples. Both
were adopted by St. Paul. But inasmuch as the Jewish view
was temporary and materialist, it was destined slowly to
lade; while the more spiritual and mystic doctrine preserves
it- freshness even to our days. Let us examine some passages
of the Pauline writings ; and first those in which the Judaising
element is prominent.

The Christian imagination in regard to the future life has
been much dominated, and is still largely influenced, by the
remarkable passages on the subject in the first Epistle to the
Corinthians, and the first to the Thessalonians, passages full of
a noble spirit and of lofty elocpaence. But when we stop our

436 EXPLORATIO EVANGELIC A

ears to the ring of their eloquence, and try to put aside from
our hearts the glorious associations with which Christendom
has covered them, and enquire into their evidential value, the
result is not reassuring. Loth passages are steeped in two
great errors, first, that the second coming of Christ was close
at hand, and second, that the question of the future life was
bound up with that of the resurrection of the body. Between
these two errors there is an obvious connection, since the
resurrection of the bodies of the newly dead at Christ's near
appearance might easily seem less impossible than can now
appear to us the resurrection of the dead bodies of all who
have lived from the beginning. The Apostle had certain
distinctive views, the full discussion of which would be very
interesting, as to the spiritual body, and changes of the material
into the immaterial. Into all this we cannot follow him ; and
it is evident that the imperfection of science in his time must
render his views, upon a subject properly scientific, of com-
paratively small value. In the very early period of the
Church, speaking generally, the doctrine of the resurrection of
the body was not held either strongly or universally. Many
early creeds read " Eesurrection from the dead " for " Resurrec-
tion of the flesh." It was only during the contest with
Gnosticism l that the Church, dreading lest the whole
doctrine of the resurrection should evaporate into meaningless-
ness, began to insist on the resurrection of the body as
essential. In the existing state of physical and metaphysical
science, no other line was open to her. But the necessities of
the second century are no test of the creed of the nineteenth
century.

Such were the speculations of St. Paul as to the end of the
world and the resurrection of the body while he was yet in the
full vigour of life ; when he expected to remain alive until he
should be caught up to meet the Lord in the air. As death
came nearer to him, ho should naturally have expected to lie
in the grave until his Master came to call him forth. But
meantime his doctrine, or rather his passion of the living and

Ited Christ, had acted strongly on mind and heart, and he
began to feel the power of that doctrine in the <|uestiou of the
1 Barnacle, Apost. Olaubensbekenntnias, p. 28.

THE FUTURE LIFE 437

future life.1 Then it was that "to depart and to be with
Chrisl waa far better," that to be absent from the body was to
be present with the Lord. Practically he hud drifted away
from the Jewish eschatology, and built a far nobler hope on
his doctrine of tin' exalted Christ. The life that he lived, he
lived in Christ; Christ lived in him; therefore death had no
more power over him; but when his body was thrown aside,
he would at once become joined to his living Master, and so
for ever be with the Lord.

This is the spiritual Christian doctrine of St. Paul's later
life as opposed to the more materialist expectation of a Second
Advent, which had earlier satisfied him. No doubt he received
it by communication of his risen Lord. But that does not
imply that it had no prototype in the world of existing
religious belief. It had in fact a Pagan parallel or rudiment
in the doctrine of the Orphic sects that life was an imprison-
ment in the body ; and that death restored the soul to its
natural communion with the gods. To this return to a divine
Bource some of the Greeks even applied the word salvation.
"Whether St. Paul- had ever heard of these views must remain
uncertain, but they were the wild fruit grown on the same
field of human nature wherein his noble and spiritual teaching
was to find root. The doctrine then, whether or not in
ultimate origin Greek, was imparted by the spirit of Christ,
and made a part of the life of believers. As Christ lives in
heaven, as the source of the Church's hidden life, so is the
Christian to live in and with him, in some existence the
nature of which is as yet hidden from us.

Not unlike the developed views of St. Paul are those of
the author of the Fourth Gospel, who takes in this matter, as
indeed in most theological questions, a view which is the
extreme antithesis of that of the author of Revelation. And
in this case, as in many others, the Fourth Evangelist, though
he gives us no realistic portrait of his Master, yet portrays his
spirit with no less truth than the less imaginative Synoptists.
In the Fourth Gospel, the long eschatological discourses are
altogether wanting. In the place of the coming of the

' This view of St. Paul's change of opinion is taken from Dr. Pfleiderer. The
later view La found in Phil, i.

43S EXPLO RATIO EVANGELICA

Messiah in the clouds of heaven, the Evangelist places a
promise, simple and vague indeed as compared with those
heart-stirring prophecies, yet destined to be the source of pro-
found confidence in life and death to many Christians. " In
my Father's house are many mansions." " I go to prepare a
place for you/' " Father, I will that they also whom thou
hast given me be with me where I am." The teaching of the
Evangelist seems to be that whereas the Church on earth
should be guided and sanctified by the Holy Spirit, Jesus
himself should return to the glory of his Father, and there
receive his followers to union with Christ and with God.
Probably the Evangelist, like St. Paul, received with his mind
the doctrine of the Second Advent ; but it has passed into the
background, and been overshadowed by the belief and earnest
expectation of union with the exalted Son of God.

As the hope of a Second Advent gradually faded from the
heart of the Church, the stately vision of the great white
throne and the gathering of all mankind to a final doom also
became dim. By slow and imperceptible degrees men
abandoned the Jewish form of eschatological belief, and
reverted to the Orphic and Platonic doctrine of the im-
mortality of the soul, which has been, like so much of
Platonic doctrine, adopted into Christianity, and has risen into
a new life through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

It remains for me briefly to indicate how far the changed
intellectual conditions of our age have altered or invalidated
the hope of the future life. This I do with the utmost
diffidence ; as it is a matter in which the masters of science
should speak rather than historians. In the first place then,
we must not allow our judgment to be turned aside by the
obvious mixture of illusion in the ordinary beliefs as to death.
It is quite in accord with what we have already observed as
to the nature of illusion to hold that, though there is un-
doubtedly much of illusion in popular beliefs as to the future
life, they may yet contain truth. Personal immortality and
family reunions may be expectations in which dreams are
mixed; and yet a man who has such expectations may be
nearer to truth than one who regards death as the real end.

A great biologist, Weismann, has lately presented us with

THE FUTURE UFE 439

an ingenious and apparently satisfactory argument to show
that the duration of the Life of living creatures La regulated by
the necessities of the species. But neither this nor any othei
modern scientific theory throws any light upon the future life
of man. This realm lies beyond the domain of outward
science, so far as science has yet reached. But on the other
hand the progress of psychology, and the study of the laws of
thought, have certainly tended to encourage a belief in the
future life, not so much by marking any outlines of that life,
as by inculcating a growing disbelief in death. At the touch
of the critical philosophy our ordinary edifice of simple
objective knowledge loses its coherence and becomes spiritual.
We discover that all knowledge is merely relative to certain
faculties which we possess. And hence we very readily pass
to the conclusion that enormous possibilities of knowledge and
of life would lie open to us if those faculties were altered or
enlarged. We pass our lives, as it were, in a single plane of
existence, whereas an infinite number of other planes of exist-
ence may lie around us, and even penetrate us without our
knowledge.1 And corporeal things thus becoming ghostly to
us, while will and character remain as the only real facts, it
appears to us incongruous that at death the unreal should
shatter the real, the merely apparent destroy that which has
solid being. Rather we must anticipate that the death of the
body, destroying our present avenues of knowledge, and
shattering the kosmos with which we are acquainted, will only
remove ua into a new plane of being. To the materialist it
may be easy to think of the soul dying with the body, but to
the idealist it seems much more natural that the death of
the body is for the personality associated with it only the
ruin of the orderly frame of things which that personality has
made for itself. And this brings us into view of infinite
possibilities of experience, of growth, and of progress beyond
the gates of death. It seems clear that at death space must
vanish, or at all events be recognised as only a phase of some
far more complicated condition. As to time the case is
different: there does not appear any special reason why time

1 In the book called Flatland this idea is worked out with considerable
ingenuity.

44Q EXPLORATIO EVANGELIC A

should not partially condition a future life as it does the present.
However, we have now reached a region of fancy and vague
conjecture : our argument is trying to fly in an atmosphere
too refined to resist the clumsy wing of reason ; and we had
best pause. We can only repeat that of all the things we
know will and character are the most real, and therefore the
most enduring ; and to suppose that a clot of blood or a bullet
can put an end to what is so immeasurably above them in the
scale of the universe is a gratuitous and very improbable
theory.

No doubt the future life thus suggested by the nature of
thought and will may seem ghostly to one unused to meta-
physics. And it may not satisfy the imperious longing for a
continued life in all essentials like the present, which makes
men and women dream eagerly of heaven and hell. It is only
a canvas which we cannot paint, a possibility which thought
cannot realise. Yet it rests upon the inmost facts of will and
thought, personality and law ; it is a hope of which no possible
progress in science or discovery can hereafter deprive man-
kind. And having such a basis the doctrine of the future life
can never be put out of court or set aside as unfounded.

To the vague outlines of the future life, as dimly discerned
by philosophic thought from the time of Plato downwards, the
specific doctrines of Christianity have given colour and definition.
To two views as regards Jesus Christ correspond two kinds
of anticipation of the future life.

(1) Those Christians who have accepted the physical resur-
rection of their Master have looked forward to rising like him in
changed and purified bodies, to dwell thenceforth in his actual
presence. (2) Those Christians who have had a strong realisa-
tion of communion with the exalted Christ have anticipated
a personal and individual life after death, under changed
conditions and in close]' relations with their Master. The
logical basis of their view seems to be this : character, as
a result of subordinating the impulses of the self to the will
of Cod partakes of the divine nature in proportion to the
success in attaining such subordination. According to the
view of the Founder which has been held in the Christian
Church, in his case the subordination of all selfish impulse to

THE FUTURE LIFE 44 •

the divine will was complete. But this subordination was not
merely a paeaive thing. It did not come from lying still and
rving desire. This is a Buddhist rather than a Christian
view. It came from actively working in union with the divine
impulses. And the result of Buch working was the formation
of a character which was divine also, and which belongs to a
higher sphere than that of sense and of time. " He that doeth
the will of < rod abideth for ever."

Thus the doctrine of the Living Christ seems to be closely
bound up with that of the future personal existence of Christiana
" Because I live, ye shall live also." And this view is with
many one of the corner-stones of religion, and even of morality.
The doctrine of a personal immortality was regarded by Tenny-
son as the root-doctrine of his creed. There are, on the other
hand, many excellent Christians to whom the experience of
life has brought precisely the opposite longing, the desire to be
rid of the narrow and egotistic self, and to sink into a broader,
a higher, and a more impersonal life.

Thus at bottom the Christian hope of immortality is based
upon experience, experience variously interpreted according to
intellectual bias and the history of the life. Thus eminent
Christians of past days, saints and heroes and martyrs, have
carried into the prospect of death the spirit taught them by the
experience of life. Having been used day by day to seek for
heavenly aid by prayer, they have learned by experience that
this aid does not fail them. A long course of trust in divine
Providence has fully convinced them that divine aid is given
when sought, and always sufficient for the need. Trust in God
d justified by the facts of life so completely that it has
v to trust Cod also in death. And Christians who
have lived like St Paul in communion with the exalted Christ,
have been convinced that death is no more able than any other
divine ordinance to separate the member from his divine Head.

And a comparison with other phases of human life will
show that it is precisely habit rooted in experience which
readily overcomes the fear of death. The high-minded soldier
who is filled with the habit of military discipline is convinced
that it is better for him to run the risk of death than to do
what is mean or disgraceful, and he meets death day by day in

442 EXPL0RAT10 EVANGELIC A

the trenches, and looks it in the face with calm determination.
The physician goes down amid a virulent infection, which will
probably be fatal to him, simply because he caunot without
violence to his acquired nature turn his back on the claims
of the sick and suffering. Each of these feels, though often in
a rudimentary and half-conscious way, that the path of duty is
really that which leads to good, and that cowardice will infal-
libly lead to evil and misery.

I HAPTEK XXXV

BAPTISM

Some of the external ordinances of the church, more especially
Baptism and the Lord's Supper, have from the first heen so
closely intertwined with doctrine as to be inseparable from
it. These also we must consider, as we have considered the
main doctrines of Christianity, from the historic side. A

is, like a doctrine, the expression of an idea, And rites,
like doctrines, are justified rather by results than on specu-
lative mounds: yet their history is often illuminating.

It is not possible to treat here in detail the history of

baptism. Already in speaking of purification1 we have dealt

with the principle which it embodies. Purifications by means

of water were as well known in Pagan cultus as the more

rificial cleansings by the blood of a victim. Sprinkling by

r was part of the preparation by which men made them-
selves tit to approach the gods with prayer and offering. And
on the more solemn occasions of Greek religion a more formal
cleansing took place. Those who were admitted as mystae
to the sacred rites at Eleusis had to undergo a previous
cleansing in the sea or salt lakes; in the worship of Cybele
and other half-Greek deities, baptism had a place; and the
priests of the Thracian Cotytto perhaps took their name of
Baptse from such a ceremony. Among the Jews, the Pharisees
rigidly adhered to the custom of washing the hands before
partaking of food, and the Essenes carried the custom of
lathing for ceremonial cleanness still further. Proselytes
1 Chapter XXV.

444 EXPLORATIO EVANGELICA

to Judaism were baptized, but not Jews born into the
faith.

The custom of baptism seems to have come into the
Christian Church directly from John the Baptist ; whence he
derived it is more doubtful, but there were abundant prece-
dents all round.1 With him it was a ceremony of confession
of sin, and of purification from it ; and as such a ceremony it
doubtless entered upon its Christian phase, though the meaning
attached to it soon widened and deepened. We are told in
the Fourth Gospel that Jesus did not himself baptize, but that
his first disciples did so on a large scale. But the silence of
the Synoptists as to baptism renders it doubtful whether the
rite was practised by the Christian society before the death of
the Founder. How it came into the society we are not sure.
What is certain is that, soon after that death, converts were
baptized into the name of Jesus Christ. The exhortation put
by our histories in the mouth of Ananias,2 " Arise and be
baptized and wash away thy sins, calling upon the name of
the Lord," may not be strictly historical, but it probably em-
bodies the views of the early disciples.

Thus the Christian element which was added to the
Jewish and Pagan rite was the name into which disciples
were baptized. In the Acts this name is that of " the Lord "
or of " Jesus Christ." For example, St. Peter, preaching on
the day of Pentecost, is reported to have said,3 " Repent, and
be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ, for
the remission of sins." And the same Apostle, on the occasion
of his visit to Cornelius,'4 " commanded them to be baptized in
the name of the Lord." It has been maintained by some
commentators that although the name of Christ only is here
mentioned, we may suppose that the usual Trinitarian formula
of baptism is intended. This explanation is indefensible,
being <juite inconsistent with the most authentic records of
early Christianity, the Epistles of St. Paul to the Romans and
the Corinthians. " So many of us," he says, " as were baptized
into Jesus Christ, were baptized into his death,"6and again,

1 I .' < • 1 1 .- 1 1 1 regards Mesopotamia .-is the source of the rite. Les Evangiles, p. 164.
Ada xxii. Hi. lb. ii. 38.

' Ii.. .. I- : cf. \iii. 16. Rom. vi. :;.

BAPTISM 445

" Waa Paul crucified for you, or were ye baptized into the
name of Paul?"1 in which passage it is implied that the
converts were baptized into the uame of him who was crucified.
And with this testimony the statements in the Acts, a far I
trustworthy authority, are quite accordant Thus there can
l>e no question that the earliest Christian baptism was into
the name of Jesus ( Ihrist ; and that the last verses of Matthew's
Gospel, prescribing baptism into the name of Father, Son, and
Holy Spirit, do not embody the teaching of the Master, oi
even of his Apostles, at the tirst.

At an early Btage, however, in the history of the Church,
the custom was introduced of baptizing into the name of
Father, Son, ami Holy Spirit ; 2 and according to the manner
of the age, a definite authority for the formula was produced
by the prevalence of a tale that the Founder had himself
ordered that it should be employed: "Go ye therefore and
teach all nation-, baptizing them in the name of the Father,
and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." Some commentators
suppose that those words are authentic, little as they are in
the manner of Jesus. But it seems quite impossible that the
custom of baptizing into the name of Christ only could have
persisted among the early disciples, if the Master himself had,

i lust solemn injunction, prescribed a different baptismal
formula. Moreover, it is to be observed that the words
ascribed to Jesus in the same verse of the First Gospel, " teach
all nations," must have originated after the Church had
realised her destiny to spread beyond the bounds of the Jewish
race, a view which, after the Muster's death, slowly made way,
mainly, no doubt, owing to the influence of St. Paul, and in
opposition to the strong feelings of some of the original
Apostles.

It is interesting to observe that the roots of the belief in
the supernatural efficacy of baptism were entwined with a
notion which the orthodox Church afterwards regarded as
heretical. I have already (Chap. XIX) quoted a passage from
Dr. Harnack, in which he expresses the opinion that the

1 1 Cm-, i. 13.

- In the Didachi baptism into the three names is mentioned, but not infant
baptism. Cruttwell, Literary History, i. 6<i.

446 EXP LO RATIO EVANGELIC A

earliest teaching of the Church did not include the virgin-
birth, but did include the baptism by John, and the descent
of the Spirit on Jesus on that occasion. The second of these
is an attempt to explain the divinity of Jesus Christ, as is the
first; and the two explanations are really alternative. If
Jesus was the Son of God from his mother's womb, it does
not seem easy to explain a subsequent descent of the Spirit
on him, thenceforth to abide with him. In Mark the " Gospel
of Jesus Christ " begins with the baptism. The narrative of
the Fourth Evangelist is even more explicit, " John bare
witness, saying, I beheld the Spirit descending as a dove out
of heaven, and it abode upon him." The words " it abode
upon him " {epeivev eV avrov) seem to imply that in the
writer's view this was the beginning of the divine life in
Jesus. In fact, if one reads carefully the whole of the chapter
this view is forced on one. Jesus Christ was the light to
which John was to bear witness, and the whole purpose of
John's ministry was to give occasion for the shining of the
light. Apocryphal gospels speak of a physical light as shining
over Jordan at the baptism : the Fourth Evangelist avoids that
piece of materialism ; but it is quite clear how highly he rates
the results of the baptism. In the Ebionite form of gospel we
go a step farther : l the clove descends and enters into Jesus,
and a voice is heard saying, " Thou art my beloved Son ; this
day have I begotten thee." Clement of Alexandria 2 accepted
this version of the divine voice ; and says that Jesus, though
already the Logos born of the Father, yet became perfect in
baptism, and hallowed by the descent of the dove.

Clement tries to combine the Lucan and the Johannine
views of the birth of Christ : the former of these by degrees
gained a more general vogue ; but the latter was in some
church circles made a key -stone of a fabric of doctrine.
Several sects have given the greatest prominence to the view
that by baptism the natural man Jesus was transformed into
the adopted Son of God, as an alternative view to that of the
.supernatural birth. It naturally caused all those who received

1 BpiphaniuB, ffcer. xxx. 18. C pare a paper by Mr. F. C. Conybeare in

the American Jowrnal of Theology, iii. 1 ; and 11. Usener, Religumsgesch. Uhter-
ruchwn '•' Pcedagogw, i. 6.

BAPTISM 447

it to attach a very high value to baptism, which was to the
believer, as to his Master, a reception of the divine Spiril and
an entry into a new life. Eence a thaumaturgic power was
attributed t" the mere rite even more readily in the eddies

than in the main stream of Christian development.

St. Paul's view of baptism is distinctive. He speaks of
burial with Christ in baptism, and of being baptized into the
death <>!' Christ.1 and of rising with him from the dead. One
would naturally expect him to say one of two things, either
that the Christian was crucified with Christ and rose again,
or else that he was baptized with Christ into a new life: but
he combines the two phrases in the manner of a great original
thinker. In his own way, he transforms the rite of baptism,
nut into a thaumaturgic process, but into a spiritual experience
of a mystic intensity. To him baptism does not merely mean
repentance for sin, and attempt at a purified life ; it was
burial with Christ and rising again with him; it was incor-
poration into the earthly body of Christ, and becoming a new
creature. There can be little doubt that in this matter, as in
others, Paul innovates by grafting upon a Jewish rite a deeper
meaning, of which the germs lay in the Pagan Mysteries.
Earnack has observed that two of the terms applied to baptism
in the early Church, sealing and illumination,2 are terms used
in the Mysteries, having reference to that salvation which it
was the purpose of the Mysteries to confer upon those who
partook of them. It was the mission of Paul in this, as in
other matters, by grasping the loftier religious ideas, which
had been partially and imperfectly recognised in the Mysteries
of Paganism, to turn the heart of the Christian Church from
Christ according to the flesh to Christ after the spirit. And
however much the pure spirituality of his teaching was after-
wards mixed with the lower elements, which were perhaps
necessary to fit it for human conditions, yet the Apostle
remains the great founder of Christian doctrine.

Thus in some Christian circles baptism, of course adult
baptism, tended to become the central rite of Christianity, the

1 Rom, vi. 4 : cf. l.'oloss. ii. 12.

2 creppayis and <f>urifffi6s. Harnack, History of Dogma, trans, i. 207 ; cf.
Wobbermin, Das antike Mystcrienicescn, p. 144.

448 EX PL ORA TIO E VA NGELICA

occasion of a perpetual moral miracle. In the victorious or
orthodox Church it took another line of development. The
baptism of infants, admitted by degrees, became more and
more general. It seems that the earliest evidence of the
practice of infant baptism is found in Irenaeus : it rapidl)r
spread in the course of the second and third centuries, in spite
of the earnest opposition of some of the leaders of the Church.1
The benefit of baptism had arisen from the co-operation of the
divine Spirit with the will of those who were baptized. But
the essential human element being overlooked, it came to be
thought that the grace of God would act without the corre-
sponding movement of the human will, and that the Church
could, by her ordinances, impart it to whom she would. The
natural consequence of this supposition would be that parents
would be eager to procure baptism for children in danger of
dying ; and it may be that from this beginning infant baptism
spread generally. And as a consequence of paedo- baptism,
since infants could not themselves renounce their evil life and
promise to follow Christ, it was necessary to introduce sponsors
who should make engagements on their behalf, who should
undertake their share of what came to be regarded as a Bort
of contract with God, guaranteeing the salvation of man.

We shall the less wonder at this change in baptism if we
consider that at a decidedly earlier time the same drift of
feeling which gave rise to it had originated another remarkable
custom, that of baptism on behalf of those who were dead. It
is extraordinary that even the spiritual genius of St. Paul did
not preserve him from accepting this custom ; nay, more, he
even bases on it an argument for the resurrection.

In such changes the modern student is apt to see only
error and decline. And there can be no doubt that they
sprang in great degree at least from false views of fact, from
wrong theories of the human will and the divine action in the
world. But in history we constantly see good growing out of
evil, and higher truth emerging from falsehood which has
strangled a lower truth. The place of baptism as the gate of

1 Dr. Ami'li [Das "<iti'/,-, Sfysterienwesen, p. 17;"") is disposed to connect
intuit baptism with the Greek custom of amphidromia, th< introduction of an
Infant to the family hearth.

BAPTISM 449

Christian life was gradually taken by the ordinance of con-
firmation, and the Boly Communion following it, which
answered the same purpose, and a uew career in the Church
\\a> opened to baptism To the tenacity of it in this new
Bphere perhaps the strongest testimony is offered by the feci
that among those dissenting bodies which profess strictly to
follow the authority of Scripture, only a small minority conform
in it by adult baptism, and the great majority adhere to infant
baptism.

When conversion to Christianity ceased to be an individual
thing, and Christians became an hereditary class in the Boman
Empire, it seems to have been felt that the children of
Christian parents should not stand towards the Church in the
same external relation as the children of Jews or Heathen.
The child is not a mere isolated phenomenon, but carries on
the life of his parents. And when the life of the parents lias
been life in Christ, the child is, as it were, born into Christ.

But whatever may have been, in the history of the
Christian Church, the value of the institution of infant baptism,
that institution became largely mixed with materialism and
with superstition. A large part of the Church still maintains
that there is in the mere fact of baptism some external
sacramental efficacy ; that a child who is baptized is thereby
changed by a miraculous interposition of divine power and
made regenerate. Such a belief can, however, scarcely find
a foothold amid the changed state of our intellectual surround-
ings. Experience does not seem to favour it. And it can
obviously have no scriptural authority, since infant baptism is
not mentioned in Scripture.

A place as prominent as that of baptism is taken in the
Acts by the rite of the laying on of hands. This rite is well
known to readers of the Jewish Scriptures. Moses laid his
hands on Joshua to constitute him his successor ; and by the
laying on of the hands of the priest the sins of Israel were
transferred to the scape-goat that was sent out into the
wilderness. But, of course, the rite was not confined to Israel ;
it is part of the natural and instinctive action of man. And
the facts of morbid psychology and hypnotism sufficiently
prove that there is great efficacy for many purposes in the

29

45o EXPL0RAT10 EVANGELIC A

contact of the human hand. Jesus is said to have wrought
many of his cures by laying his hands on those who were sick.
And the first disciples, with or without direction from their
Master, adopted the Jewish belief that he who had the Spirit
could impart it to others by the laying on of hands.1 This
belief, like the practice of baptism, they consecrated to Christ,
and brought into the service of the early Church.

1 Cf. Anrich, Das antike Mystcriemvcsca, p. 117.

CH APT Eli XXXVI

THE COMMUNION

The doctrine of the Christian Communion occupies as sacred
a place in Catholic Christianity as does the doctrine of the
Atonement among the Evangelical churches, and it is with no
less caution and moderation that it should be approached.
But it is possible to consider it without presumption when
one treats it from the definitely historic point of view. The
true and ultimate foundation of the doctrine of the Communion
is, as we shall observe later, the experience in the Church of
the efficacy of the practice of the Communion. But the
inquiry into the origin and early history of the custom is a
purely historic matter : at least historic science will not and
cannot be warned off the ground in these days. And such
historic inquiries cannot prove or disprove directly anything
in regard to actual experience of existing fact.

The great mass of Christians no doubt take the accounts
of the foundation of the Communion at the last supper of
Jesus on earth, as they are given in the English text of the
Synoptic Gospels, for a literal narrative of facts. In the same
way those unused to philosophic inquiry find no difficulty in
understanding the ultimate nature of matter. In both cases
reflection and study show that what seems very simple and
straightforward is really by no means such. The simple-
minded Christian may naturally say that he is unfitted for
critical historic study ; and the statement is very reasonable :
only, if he allows that he is not a good judge of historic evi-
dence, then he must not base his belief upon such evidence,

4 5 2 EXPLORA TIO E V ANGELIC A

but rather on spiritual experience, of which he may be an
excellent judge.

If we begin with comparing the Synoptic account of the
Last Supper with the Johannine, our difficulties will at once
arise. The discourse at the Synoptic meal is as to the body
and blood of the Master ; at the Johannine meal it is as to
the washing of feet, and the question who should be the
traitor. But that is not all ; it may be said, Why should not
all this talk have taken place, and one evangelist have recorded
some part of it and another another part ? The answer is
that the Synoptic meal is clearly the Jewish Paschal feast,
while the Johannine meal is no such thing, but an ordinary
supper before the Passover.

Next we may observe that the Johannine account, which
bears internal marks of resting on some good authority, does
indeed connect the Last Supper with a Christian ordinance ;
but it is the ordinance of washing feet, not of a common
repast. When it was written, we know on the testimony of
St. Paul's Epistles that the Communion was in common use at
least in many of the churches, yet the Evangelist does not
give any countenance to the view that it was founded by the
Master on the eve of his departure. In several of the dis-
courses which he attributes to Jesus the doctrines afterwards
grouped about the Communion are mentioned, but they are
detached, as if of set purpose, from any special rite. Thus in
one place we have the parable of the vine and its branches,
which naturally connects itself with the use of wine in the
Communion. But the early Christians sometimes used water
rather than wine at the rite, and with this use we may com-
pare the passage in the Johannine Gospel as to the living-
water which shall be in a man as a well of water, springing
up into everlasting life. Even closer to the Christian Com-
munion is that remarkable passage in John vi., beginning " I
am the bread of life." It is natural to think that all this is
intentional, and that the writer of the Fourth Gospel was
doubtful as to the expediency of rooting in the Church an
outward observance .such as the Communion. One of the
least materialist of all religious teachers, though not always
consistently so, lie was anxious to keep alive the lull spiritual

THE COMMUNION 453

meaning of every word of his Master. " It is the spirit thai
quickeneth, the flesh profiteth nothing; the words that I
Bpeak unto you, they are spirit and they are life." With even
greater fervour would this great writer have urged such views
upon the disciples, had he foreseen the gross materialism which
was destined to rule in the church in future ages.

Next, if we compare the account in Luke with St. Paul's
Letter to the Corinthians (1 Cor. xi. 23), we observe that Paul
describes the scene of the Last Supper in almost the words used
hy the Evangelist; but he also tells us that he received the
knowledge not from the disciples, but "from the Lord"; that
is, by a direct revelation to himself. These are sufficient
historic difficulties to start with: and they make us feel like
travellers who, when expecting easily to reach the crest of a
mountain, should suddenly find a series of deep ravines break-
he road.

It is noteworthy that in the account of the Last Supper as
given in the Synoptic Gospels there is no direction as to the
institution of a recurring rite in memory of that supper. The
words, " This do in remembrance of me," occur in our text of
the Third Gospel, but they are apparently an interpolation,1 or
if not an interpolation, taken directly from St. Paul. The
phrase, " breaking of bread," used in the Acts for the Christian
common meal, is an expression used in various passages of the
Old Testament, and well understood by the Jews. We may
cite Isaiah lviii. 7, where the best authorities read, " Is it not
to break thy bread to the hungry?" The words "breaking
bread," then, imply no more than a common meal, such as was
usual among the first Christians, and certainly do not imply a
sacrament. And the breaking of bread from house to house
was part of the partial community of goods in the Church :
whichever disciple had the means and the time provided a
meal. The clear fact then is, that there is no direct evidence
that Jesus, when alive, founded any communion of eating and
drinking.

Even supposing that the Founder of Christianity did intend

1 So "VVestcott and Hort, Select Readings, p. 64. '; These difficulties" . . .
" leave no moral doubt that the words in question were absent from the original
text of Luke."

454 EXPLORATIO EVANGELIC A

to perpetuate among his disciples some memorial of his last
supper with them, the question would still remain what kind
of rite he meant to establish. "Was it a special manner of
celebrating the Paschal feast, of which of course all the
disciples, as good Jews, partook every year ? Was it the
ordinary meal of every day that the Apostles were to conse-
crate by a memory of their Master ? Some of the phrases in
the Evangelists certainly seem to give colour to this latter
view. But taking our narratives as they stand, it is scarcely
possible to read them as directing the establishment of some
new and purely Christian rite. Nor is there any evidence of
any such rite in the Church until we come to St. Paul.

In the First Corinthian Epistle (xi. 24) this Apostle
speaks of the Lord's Supper as a solemn rite introduced by
himself into the Church of Corinth. Whence then did he
derive it ? His phrase is, " I received it from the Lord " ; and,
although commentators are divided as to the precise import of
the phrase, it is far most natural to take it, with Chrysostom,
Calvin, Estius, Bengel, Osiander, Olshausen, Alford, Evans,
Edwards, and a host of other writers, as implying an im-
mediate communication made by his risen Lord to the Apostle
himself. If this be the true interpretation, it must be allowed
that, setting aside the question how much St. Paul knew of the
historic facts of the Last Supper, the command to observe a
rite in memory of it comes not, so far as our actual evidence
goes, from the historic Jesus, but from Paul, speaking in the
name of his Master.

This very simple recital of facts will show on how slight
and conflicting evidence is based the commonly-received view
that the Lord's Supper was instituted by the Founder of our
religion, on the night before he suffered, and was constantly
thereafter celebrated by his disciples. Dr. Hort has entirely
removed the basis of that view when he rejects as an inter-
polation in Luke the words, "This do in remembrance of me."
These historic difficulties induced me, in 180."-. bo publish ;t
short paper, in which I discussed them, and suggested for the
consideration of scholars some novel views. That pamphlet
was intended mainly to call attention to ;i difficull problem ;
and in tin's purpose it was successful. Bui Borne "I the

THE COMMUNION 435

theories which I then brought forward no Longer satisfy me
I insisted on the personal character of the revelation to
St. Paul of the Lord's Supper; and rightly: but the notion
that Paul when at Corinth may have taken a suggestion of
the sacred meal from the rites carried on at the neighbouring
Eleusis now seems to me untenable. It would require very
strong evidence to make us believe that Paul, with all his
Catholicity, would accept a hint derived from such a source.

The historic view of the origin of the Lord's Supper which
I now prefer is suggested by a luminous observation of Prof.
Weizsacker.1 He observes that in the common life of the
society Jesus, when alive, presided at meals, and broke the
bread. His manner of doing so was peculiar to himself; since
he was said to have been recognised by it after his resurrection.
• When, therefore, his followers continued these common meals,
they involved, even apart from the memorial celebration insti-
tuted by him at the last, the perpetual renewal both of their
relations to him and (if the union constituted by him. The
meal itself was therefore a religious act. It became a thank-
offering, and a type and evidence of the kingdom of God
existent among them, and ruling and transforming their whole
natural and social life."

I would go rather further than Dr. Weizsacker, and say
that when the disciples met at the common meal after the
I 1 ueifixion, being full of the consciousness of the presence of
their Master in the spirit, they could scarcely fail to think of
him as still presiding. Such banquets with unseen guests
were among the commonest of the phenomena of Greek and
Oriental religion, more especially in connection with the cultus
of those who had departed out of life. It was exceedingly
natural that in this way every common meal should become a
banquet of communion with the risen Lord.

But what in that case can be the meaning of Paul when
he claims the Lord's Supper as specially revealed to himself ?
We may perhaps venture to take his phrases with a little
latitude. What he meant to deny was the reception of the

1 Das Apostol. Z&UalU r, p. 43 : Trans, p. 52. Dr. Weizsacker does, however,
regard the account given by the Synoptists of the Last Supper as historical
(Trans, ii. 279). His discussion of this matter is less thoroughgoing than usual.

456 EXPLORATIO EVANGELICA

rite from the Apostles, as if he were in any way under their
sway. It was a revelation to himself which induced him to
import into the Church at Corinth a custom prevalent at
Jerusalem. And what he established at Corinth was not in
fact the same rite as that of Jerusalem, but a rite on the
higher mystic level. The words, " This do in remembrance of
me," seem to be the burden of the revelation to Paul ; but
whence the more detailed description of the Supper came we
must remain in doubt. It is perhaps scarcely fair to press his
words in their literal meaning, and to suppose that the facts of
the Last Supper as he repeats them were a vision revealed to
himself, but afterwards generally accepted in the Church as
historic. Unless theologians are prepared to accept this some-
what extreme view, they must suppose that there was current
among Christians, and known to Paul, a tradition of a historic
last supper, such as the Synoptists describe ; and that Paul
claims, as the result of a direct revelation only, the adaptation
of the rite and its introduction into the Church of Corinth.

Whatever may have been the historic occasion of the first
introduction of the institution, it seems clear that its character
was by St. Paul brought into harmony with his mystical
doctrines of baptism, of the Church, and of the exalted Christ.
As the Christian Sacrament was received first in the Pauline
churches and then generally, it belongs to the Pauline circle
of ideas, and St. Paul, if not the actual introducer of the rite,
was the author of its mystical and sacramental character, as
showing the Lord's death and imparting communion with his
life. To make this clear, we must briefly resume the pre-
Christian history of the Christian Communion.

Of the three ideas embodied in ancient sacrifice of which
we have spoken in Chapter XXIX, the first, that of mere
donation to the gods, has its modern development in alms-
giving and in self-sacrifice. The second idea, that of atone-
ment, has, ;is we have seen in Chapter XXXI, been still more
specifically introduced into Christianity. The third, that of a
common life between worshipper and worshipped, belongs to
the present connection. Sacrifices of communion belong to
the most sacred stratum of the religion of many barbarous
tribes. Their cultus centres in the periodical festival at which

THE COM MUX ION 457

some victim, which is regarded as embodying the common life
of the community, La Blain and eaten in common, to renew the
life of the tribe.1 Among tribes at a higher level of civilisa-
tion these beliefs have lived on, but in modified form. In the
I tionysiac and Mithraic Mysteries of Greece they were overlaid
with symbolism rather than altered in essence. But in the more
public and less mysterious cults of Greece, the sacrifice took
rather the ham of a meal, wherein the deity and the wor-
shippers renewed their relations by means of a solemn common
meal. This feasting in common was not reserved for the
festivals held in honour of the dead, though in these it was
especially well established, but also was practised at many of
the great public services of Greece, at which food was spread
for the gods, and they came to enjoy the hospitality of the
cities which they honoured with their protection, at the
BO-called Theoxenia or Lectisternia.

The primitive communion sacrifice also survived among the
• lews in the form of the Paschal feast, many of the rites of
which can only be explained, as Mr. Frazer has well shown, by
supposing it in origin a harvest and communion feast. The
account which we possess of the origin of the rite must be
regarded as having arisen later. It would seem, however, that
the influence of the Paschal feast on the Christian rite was not
direct. It was necessary to revert from it to an earlier point
in the main stem of sacrificial belief, and thus Pagan Mystery
had closer analogy than Jewish rite.

Any one who compares the Pauline account of the Last
Supper with the procedure at the Paschal feast, as set forth in
any work on Jewish or Biblical antiquities, will observe that
there is hardly any correspondence between the two. The
1 'aschal meal was marked by the eating of a lamb, unleavened
bread, and bitter herbs, and the drinking of four successive
cups of wine, At the Pauline Sacrament only bread, apparently
of the ordinary kind, and one cup of wine are mentioned. It
would seem far more probable that its immediate origin
should be sought in Jewish common meals of an ordinary
kind, than in the Paschal celebration.

This line of observation is strengthened by a comparison

On this subject see several chapters of Mr. Frazer's Golden Bough.

45§ EXPLORATIO EVAXGELICA

of the Didaclie. The eucharistic formulae there detailed (ch.
ix. 10) are very curious. In them there is nothing of the
Pauline view, no allusion to the sacrifice of the cross, but
thanks for the holy vine of David, and for life and knowledge
through Jesus, and a prayer that the Church may be gathered
together from the ends of the earth into the heavenly kingdom.
It is impossible in the present place to discuss these formulae
with the attention which they deserve, but they have every
appearance of being Jewish in origin, modified by adoption
into Christianity. There is a probability that the rite
described in the Didache contains elements which belong to
the synagogues of the Jewish Diaspora, like so much else that
was absorbed into early Christianity. Or it may be a direct
descendant of the common meal of the Church at Jerusalem,
unmodified by Pauline ideas.

It seems reasonable to incline to see in the Christian
Sacrament as accepted by the Church an early Christian
custom of the common meal mixed with an infusion of
sacrificial mysticism, probably clue to Paul. I now prefer this
view to one I have elsewhere suggested, that it was the ritual
of Eleusis which suggested to Paul, when staying at the
neighbouring Corinth, the idea of a Christian Communion.
Direct imitation of any heathen rite by a Christian teacher is
improbable ; far more probable is the working of an idea in
parallel lines on Pagan societies and on Christianity. Out of
a mere ordinary meal, by making it the embodiment of some
of the most ancient and most profound of religious ideas, there
grew a backbone for the framework of Christianity. ;i continued
means of communion between the exalted Master and his
followers on earth.

If the historic doubts which lie around the origin of the
great Christian rite are scarcely to be dissipated, it is all the
more necessary and the more legitimate to appeal from the
origin of the institution to its continued history in the Church.

Here, at all event.-, We arc OH sate ground, The evidence .if

christian experience is clear enough.

The doctrine of the Communion, however it may have
been mixed with foreign accretions, or Bometimes rendered

materialist by unworthy development-. is yet doubtless in the

THE COMMUNION 459

last resort built upon a basis of feet. One of the writers in
Lux Mv/ndV expresses this in a brief but sufficient way, "He

has prepared for us a way which leads from strength to
Btrength; and we know when- He is ready to meet us, and to
replenish us with life and light. There is a glory which shall
he revealed in us; and here on earth we may so draw neai
and take it to ourselves that its quiet incoming tide may more
and more pervade our being: with radiance ever steadier and
more transforming . . . not by vague waves of feeling, or by
moments of experience which admit no certain measure, no
unvarying test, no objective verification, but by an actual
change, a cleansing and renewal of our manhood, a transfor-
mation which we <an mark in human lives and human faces,
or trace in that strange trait of saintliness which Christianity
has wrought into the rough fabric of human history, may the
reality fit' Sacramental grace be known on earth."

There can be no question of the enormous value of the
practice in the Christian Church. Christian prayer may be
the highest form of prayer, but the essential nature of prayei
is the same in all countries. But the Christian Communion
-lands apart as belonging wholly to Christianity. And modern
researches into religious psychology have shown that the
centre of gravity of religion in most ages lies rather in practice
and habit than in thought or belief. Thus the Communion
aj 'peals to the faculties with an incredible force, derived from
the religious awe and aspirations not only of our Christian
ancestors, but of hundreds of generations of barbarians who
lived before the Christian era. It brings satisfaction nut only
to the conscious surface of our minds, but to feelings of which
we are but half conscious or wholly unconscious. It has a hold
on the deepest and most human roots of our nature. Possibly
there may be some to whom the suggestion of a connection
between the Christian Communion and early views of sacrifice
may seem derogatory to the former. This way of regarding
the matter is quite unjustified. To any thoughtful man, and
especially to any believer in evolution, the long descent and
the noble history of the Communion of Sacrifice, before its
conversion to Christianity, must needs make it appear far

1 1st edit. p. 433. The writer is Dr. Paget.

460 EXPLORATIO EVANGELICA

more august and far more valid than could have been before,
now supposed by any of the Protestant schools of religious
thought. At the same time we receive a warning against a
too materialist view of the Communion, when we see that it
has behind it whole millennia of gradually growing spiritualisa-
tion. The beliefs attaching to the rite among the uneducated
of the south of Europe are a survival not merely from
Paganism, but from a stage of religious development which lies
earlier than polytheism.

But is it feasible to transfer the binding authority of the
Lord's Supper from a ground of history to one of experience ?
No doubt this is a serious and a difficult question, which it
is perhaps somewhat bold to discuss at all, and which
at any rate one must discuss with great diffidence. No
doubt many English Christians regard the Communion as
sacred only because they conceive it to have the direct
authority of the Founder when on earth. They stake their
whole faith on the correctness of certain historical views.
Much as we may sympathise with and respect this school of
Christians, we cannot but feel that they hold an untenable
position, and that every year and every day the rising waters
of historic doubt are undermining the ledge on which they
dwell in the houses of their ancestors. The final catastrophe
can scarcely be distant. In our days religion must be built
on fact and experience, not on mere written record, or on
testimony which cannot be tested.

If the modern Christian is content to base his religious
belief and practice on experience, whether his own or that of
others whom he trusts, then he occupies a position which can
scarcely be assailed. If he bases them on an ideal recon-
struction of history, he is on ground far less safe, for at any
time new facts may come to light which render his view
untenable. Yet so long as such facts do not appear, he may
retain his footing. But if he claim bo base his doctrine and
practice upoD the actual fact of history, then he boldly
challenges the spirit of historic scepticism, and must consent
to 1"' tried before the tribunal of historic science. And
in these days of scepticism he will run the greatest
risk of overthrow. He builds not on the rock, but on

THE COMMUNION 46]

the sandy shore of a stream, the waters of which are hourly
rising.

There is another fact which persons of this way of thinking
must consider. Though there is no proof that Jesus intended
to institute a Lord's Supper, there is another rite for which
we have definite evangelical evidence. The Fourth Evangelist
tells how, when just about to suffer, Jesus with careful
solemnity washed the feet of his Apostles. And having done
so, he took his garments and sat down again and began to
enforce the lesson inherent in his action, enjoining them in
Bimilar manner to wash one another's feet. Definitely and
deliberately, if we can trust our narrative, he established a rite.
of course the Christian Church could not entirely neglect this
ordinance; yet how different has been its history from the
history of the Communion. The reason of this difference lies
Dot in the words or actions of the Founder of Christianity,
but in the circumstance that the washing of feet did not
become attached to any of the great historic lines of religious
doctrine, while the Communion did become so attached. In
evolutionary language we may say that the Communion,
whensoever it first became a part of Christian cultus, and
whosoever was its first institutor, was the work of the Divine
Spirit creating forms suitable to the life of the future,
preparing organs for functions yet to be developed. Like
almost all customs and institutions, the Communion gradually
grew to the fulness of the meaning attached to it by the later
( Ihurch. Perhaps some of the aftergrowth savours of super-
stition, perhaps of materialism. The various schools of
( Ihristian thought must attach to the rite such meaning as
suits their best thought and highest inspiration.

The natural enemy of all working hypotheses, which are
necessarily relative, is the old absolute spirit which still rules
in so many spheres, and which will maintain that unless the
Sacrament was established by the divine Founder of Christi-
anity while on earth, it must needs be a superstitious rite, of
no efficacy, but rather misleading the souls of men. Arbitrary
and presumptuous as is this view, and distinctly contrary to
our experience of the world, it is to be feared that it would
commend itself to many, whether Catholics or Protestants.

462 EXP LORATIO EVANGELIC A

Only the gradual spread of science and of the comparative
method can gradually wean men's minds from such views.

There is a phrase, popular with some of the Broad Church
School, which will well serve to define our position in the
matter, the phrase " the higher third." First we have the
absolute assertion that the Communion was ordained and laid
upon men by the direct authority of the living Author of
Christianity, and is therefore divine and effectual. Secondly
we have the absolute negation : it cannot be proved that the
Communion was so instituted ; therefore it is neither divine
nor effectual. Thirdly we have the relative affirmation : the
Communion is certainly effectual and therefore divine, at least
to the greater part of professing Christians ; but its origin
is a matter which cannot be settled by experience nor by
mere reasoning, but which must be investigated by historical
research.

CHAPTEE XXXVII

THE INSPIRATION OF SCEIPTUKB

When, in the sixteenth century, the Teutonic nations decisively
reject'''! the authority of the Etonian Churchj their appeal was
to another authority, that of Holy Scripture. They believed
generally that the Bible was directly inspired by the Spirit of
God, and used it as a touchstone for detecting the false
duct line- of Rome. But the doctrine of the direct inspiration,
the infallibility of Scripture, was no new teaching, rather
one which had its roots in a very remote past. Its ultimate
source is certainly Jewish; it is one of the legacies handed on
by Jewish rabbis to Christian teachers. Among the Jews of
the early Christian age, the belief in the verbal and literal
infallibility of their sacred books had reached a pitch of
superstition which is almost incredible. Every sentence and
word and letter was regarded as directly dictated by God.
And so great was the fear of introducing some small alteration
in transcribing the sacred books, that manuscripts of any of
them were collated and recollated and sold at enormous prices,
many-fold of what would be paid for Greek manuscripts of the
.same length. And Jehovah himself was represented by the
Scribes as spending nights and days in reading and studying
the Scriptures. Veneration for the Jewish Scriptures passed
at the first into the system of early Christianity, and there
exercised great influence.

It is by no means easy to determine the attitude taken up
by the Founder of Christianity towards Scripture. In the
narrative of the Temptation he is represented as repelling

464 EXPLO RATIO EVANGELICA

every suggestion of Satan by some maxim quoted from it.
And very strong expressions of veneration for the text of the
law are placed in the mouth of the Founder by the Synoptic
writers. For example we read, " Till heaven and earth pass,
one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law till all
be fulfilled. Whosoever therefore shall break one of these
least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be
called the least in the kingdom of heaven." It is very difficult
to reconcile such extreme expressions as these with the great
freedom with which, in other places, Jesus amends or supersedes
the commandments of the law, or with such other statements
as " Moses, because of the hardness of your hearts, suffered
you to put away your wives ; but from the beginning it was
not so." In view of this, some able commentators have
thought that the class of passages first cited must derive not
from the Founder, but from some prominent member of the
Church at Jerusalem. They have thought it impossible that
Jesus should have spoken in such terms of veneration of a law
which he in many points wished to supersede. It seems clear
that Jesus distinguished between the spirit and the letter of
the law, regarding the former as eternal and divine, the latter
as liable to supersession. Even the admission of this dis-
tinction does not, however, completely solve our difficulty ;
for in some matters, notably as regards the law of marriage
and divorce, it is not only the letter of the Jewish law, but its
spirit also, which the Founder sets himself to dispute. It
therefore seems that, unless we are to suppose some incon-
sistency in the Master's teaching, wo must regard the reports
of his expression of veneration for the law as exaggerated in
transmission.

The close clinging to Scripture on the part of the writers
of the earliest Christian books is obvious to the reader. Alike
the Synoptists and Si. Paul think the citation of scriptural
passages better proof of doctrine, or even of historic fact, than
either reason or testimony. "We have already seen how whole
passages in Matthew are put together out of prophecies regarded

;,.s Messianic. The speeches ill the Acta, thai of Peter OD the

day of Pentecost, that of Philip to the Ethiopian in his chariot,
that of Stephen before his judges, are all based upon citation.

THE TNSPIRA /'/< W OF SCRIPTl RE 465

not of evidence, but of passages of Scripture. Even in the
doctrinal discussions in Romans and Galatians, we find the
Btones of the fabric to be texts of Scripture, while the argu-
ments of tin1 writer are but as the cement which holds them
together. But of course in the case of so great and original
a thinker as Paul there is no slavery or suhservience to the
sacred text, rather a fret' and genial use of it for high purpose.
And although Paul is overflowing with veneration for Scripture
he allows himself to speak of the Mosaic law as of something
which had passed into the background compared with the
rising life of the Christian society. The Apology of Justin is
.1 good example to show how extreme veneration for Scripture
lasted in full force into the second century; and in fact it has
always persisted.

The Jews, who had been scattered in the days after
Alexander over all the cities of the Eastern Mediterranean,
had carried with them everywhere as their most cherished
possession their sacred writings. In the reading and exposi-
tion of these the whole service of the synagogues centred.
Their influence kept Israel uncontaminated, a peculiar people,
zealous of good works. And this immense advantage the
Christian Church received undiminished from the Jews.
Harnack writes,1 " Whatever source of comfort and strength
Christianity, even in its New Testament, has possessed, or
does possess up to the present, is for the most part taken from
the Old Testament, viewed from a Christian standpoint, in
virtue of the impression of the person of Jesus." " Out of this
treasure, which was handed down to the Greeks and Romans,
the Church edified herself, and in the perception of its riches
was largely rooted the conviction that the holy book must in
every line contain the highest truth."

It was a slow and gradual process whereby the immense
reverence felt in the Church for the Scriptures of the Old Testa-
ment was extended also to the Gospels and the Pauline Epistles.
The orthodox Church differed from the Gnostics in that she
retained full veneration for the Jewish Scriptures, which the
Gnostics would have placed at a lower level or even rejected.
But of course it was inevitable that with time the New Testa-

1 Dogmengeschic/iff, trans, i. 42, cf. 177.
So

466 EX PLC RATIO EVANGELICA

nient should become a more valued possession of Christen-
dom than the Old. The modern world necessarily reverses
the process of the early Church. It is of the New Testament
primarily that those who still cling to the doctrine of Biblical
infallibility are thinking, and the Old Testament shines with a
lustre which is mainly reflected from it.

The formation of a canon of New Testament scripture was
in the main a work of the second century. The principal
object of such a canon was to check the aberrations of
abnormal enthusiasm. As always happens when a wave of
religious inspiration is subsiding, strange and wild heresies
were making themselves felt in the Church. The members of
the Church in the first century had been so full of the presence
of their Master, so overflowing with the gifts of the Spirit,
that the written word was of less import to them. But later
a test and a check for the outpourings of personal inspiration
became necessary. Professedly it was formed by making a
book of the genuine apostolic writings. But in practice some-
thing different took place. Mark and Luke were not Apostles,
and the Fjtisflc to the Hebrews is anonymous ; while, on the
other hand, several books bearing the name of Apostles were
excluded from the canon. For early Christians the cpiiestion
of the genuineness and authenticity of various books read in
the churches was inextricably mixed up with the question of
the tendencies of those books. What did not tend to edifica-
tion could not be apostolic ; and, on the other hand, nothing
was easier than to attribute to an Apostle a work of undoubted
inspiration. Thus, partly on evidence of tradition, and partly
by a process of natural selection, the books of our New Testa-
ment were put together, and canonised for all time. As usual,
the lead in this crystallising process was taken by Home, while
Alexandria continued long to be more liberal in admitting to
church reading any work which seemed to possess the spirit
of the Master.

Only a thoroughly uncritical age could hope to base a rule
of faith which should be generally binding on the infallibility of
Scripture. The Bible is less fitted to be thus used than perhaps
any other sacred book. Mohammedans have in the Koran a
book written at one period of time, the text of which was

THE INSP1RA Th K\ OF SCRIPTl RE 467

settled once for all by the direct authority oi the Khalif ; it is
therefore very well suited to serve as a standard of appeal
But the Bible is beyond all books composite: written at inter-
vals over a period of a thousand years by men differing utterly
from one another in circumstance, in disposition, in intention.
Even the New Testament, though the work of one age, exhibits
in its various books entirely different schools of religious
thought, though dominated by the might)' influence of the
Founder of Christianity. In dealing with the Bihle only two
alternatives are possible: either the whole was verbally and
literally inspired, so that the writers of the various hooks were
merely the amanuenses writing at the dictation of the Divine
Spirit, or else literary and historic criticism must be called in
and granted a fair field, be the consequences what they may.
Of course the educated world has long ago made up its mind
to adopt the second of the two alternatives. There is no
longer any need to discuss the question whether the Bible is
infallible in questions of scientific fact or even in questions of
history. But a great part of the Christian world is somewhat
inconsistently prepared to maintain the infallibility of Scripture
in the matters of faith and morals.

Yet, if it be true, as is now generally allowed by reason-
able theologians, that the revelation of the Old Testament is
progressive, then it at once follows that the more archaic and
undeveloped parts of it will contain many things which are set
aside by the spiritual growth of the human race. Teaching
which in the infancy of the race might correspond to the best
ideals then current, would be naturally superseded at a later
time. This is precisely what happened among the Greeks.
The myths which it was a part of piety to accept in the
Homeric age were a scandal to the more advanced ethical
feelings of the men of the fifth century. Later philosophers
made allegories of these tales, and saved their morality by
taking them not in their original meaning, but in some fancy
sense. And from the days before Philo onwards many theo-
logians, both Jewish and Christian, have been busy in devising
such non-natural interpretations of early Jewish tales. This
is a stage through which sacred books naturally pass, as they
are left behind by ethical progress.

468 EXPLO RATIO EVANGEL1CA

Possibly some people may hold that although the Jewish
Scriptures cannot claim infallibility, yet such infallibility as
regards faith and morals may rest with the Scriptures of the
New Testament. But every reasonable person must see that
precisely the same principles of historical and literary criticism
which reveal imperfections in the history and ethics of the
Old Testament will reveal defects, though of a less striking
kind, in the history and ethics of the New Testament, Dr.
Driver, in his recent able Introduction to the Literatwre of the
Old Testament} after pointing out that it is impossible to
deny that we find in the Old Testament history modified by
tradition and by the literary habits of the writers, adds, " It
is to be pointed out that the records of the New Testament
were produced under very different historical conditions ; the
circumstances are such as to forbid the supposition that the
facts of our Lord's life on which the fundamental truths of
Christianity depend can have been a growth of mere tradition,
or are anything else than strictly historical." Of course
different circumstances of production in the two cases are
precisely a plea to which the tribunal of criticism will allow
the greatest weight. But we observe that Dr. Driver asserts
that criticism is and must be the final court of appeal in the
matter. His weighty and earnest words go to the root of the
matter: "It is impossible to doubt that the main conclusions
of critics with reference to the Old Testament rest upon
reasonings, the cogency of which cannot be denied without
denying the ordinary principles by which history is judged
and evidence estimated. Nor can it be doubted that the same
conclusions, upon any neutral field of investigation, would have
been aecepted without hesitation by all conversant with the
subject: they are only opposed in the present instance by
some theologians because they are supposed to conflict with
the requirements of the Christian faith. But the history
of astronomy, geology, and more recently of biology, supplies
a warning that tin; conclusions which satisfy the common
unbiassed and unsophisticated reason of mankind prevail in
the end." We have but to substitute in this passage the
words New Testament for Old Testament to have an excellent

1 P. xvii.

THE INSPIR. I Tit >.V ' '/■' SCRIP! f RE 469

assertion of the true principle; in fact the principle, if good in
the one case, must be equally good in the other, fcfo doubt
the criticism of the New Testamenl La in a lesa forward and
Bteady condition than that of the Old. 5Te1 propositions Buch
as that the author of the Fourth Gospel '••imposes speeches for
his Master, or that the Lucan and the Johannine accounts of
the last days of the Founder are not to be reconciled, "cannot
be denied without denying the ordinary principles by which
history is judged," and are only opposed "by some theologians
because they are Bupposed to conflict with the requirements of
the Christian faith." Those whose Christian faith is built on
a belief in the historical trustworthiness of the miracles rest on
a foundation of precisely the same kind as that of the theo-
Logian who should accept in deference to the hook of Genesis
nt ric system of astronomy. All compromises are
unavailing: we must have either verbal inspiration or scientific
criticism with its results, whatever they may be.

But though the doctrine of Biblical infallibility be unmain-
tainable, yet the facts upon which it was based remain. That
the Scriptures are in relation to conduct and faith inspired
and sources of inspiration is matter not of argument but of
experience. What intellectual objective meaning may attach
to the word inspired we shall consider presently. In the
meantime we must briefly speak of the personal inspiration to
individuals of Scripture.

The doctrine of the infallibility of Scripture is, then, like
other doctrines, essentially the statement in objective form of
a strong subjective feeling, which is the result of spiritual
experience and of the facts of conduct. Generation after
generation have found that it is by coming to the Bible that
conduct is raised and inspired. " As long as the world lasts,"
writes Matthew Arnold,1 "all who want to make progress in
righteousness will come to Israel for inspiration, as to the
people who have had the sense of righteousness most glowing
and strongest; and in hearing and reading the words Israel
lias uttered for us, carers for conduct will find a glow and a
force they could find nowhere else. As well imagine a man
with a sense for sculpture not cultivating it by the help of the
1 Literature and Dogma, ch. i. sec. 5.

470 EXPLORATIO EVANGEL1CA

remains of Greek art, or a man with a sense for poetry not
cultivating it by the help of Homer and Shakespeare, as a man
with a sense for conduct not cultivating it by the help of the
Bible ! And this sense, in the satisfying of which we come
naturally to the Bible, is a sense which the generality of men
have far more decidedly than they have the sense for art or for
science." There is a consonance between passages of Scripture
and the spiritual nature of man. It is a matter of history
and of daily experience that those who read Scripture in order
to gain light and to acquire impulse in religion are not dis-
appointed. As a man's heart answers to the heart of a friend,
or as the string of a harp responds when the corresponding
string in another harp is struck, so the fibres of man's spiritual
nature answer to the appeal of Scripture. Very often the
passage which causes the vibration is one possessing the least
of outward authority, a verse of an anonymous psalm, or a
passage which the critics condemn as an interpolation ; it
matters not. The result is a fact which no criticism can
explain away.

One of the most interesting and the most usual of
phenomena in the lives of great religious leaders and teachers
is the way in which, in the great crises of their lives, passages
of Scripture come into their minds, to solve a doubt, to inspire
conduct, or prompt to a higher line of action. In the lives of
the earliest Christians, as reported in the New Testament,
these sudden inspirations take the form rather of a direct
revelation of the Master, " My grace is sufficient for thee," or
" What God hath cleansed call not thou common." But in
later days, when heaven was further, the same guidance was
frequently derived from passages of Scripture which suddenly
came home with a new force and meaning to the conscience.
Many instances of this kind might be cited from Bunyan's
rilt/rinis Progress. Or we may find them in the lives of
Wesley, Newman, and other religious leaders : indeed there
can scarcely be found a life of a Christian leader in which
such things have not taken place. Scripture is thus personally
applied t<> life and to conduct, and becomes the inspired and
inspiring guide into the divine paths. It is often wonderful t<»

see with what wisdom and good sense persons neither clever

77/ A" INSPIRA Th W < >/■' SCRIPTl rRE 471

hot well educated will deal with passages of Scripture. The
history of the Protestant Churches is tin- best proof of the
power "1' tin- wisdom which works through Scripture, and in
especial the history of the [ndependent Churches in England.
Almost without external organisation they have been kept for
century after century in fairly steadfast lines of doctrine and
practice by the continued inspiration which has flowed from
the study of Scripture. It is a phenomenon which no theorist
would have anticipated and which no unreligious theory can
explain: a standing memorial of the inspiration of the Bible
which none can gainsay.

It is clear that those who come to the Bible for inspiration
in conduct will l»e attracted by some parts of it more than by
others. They will less care to read about the facts of the
material world or perhaps even the events of history. What
will attract them is the expression of emotion and of aspira-
tion. They will examine eagerly the directions as to practical
living which the Bible contains. And they will accept also
with delight those statements of doctrine which are but the
rendering in the intellectual sphere of the facts of emotion
and of conduct. They will read and repeat not narratives but
pa-sages, not chapters but texts.

When thus read, Scripture is really translated from the
past tense into the present. The reader sees a record not of
a distant state of society, but of that in which he lives. The
foes of the Israelites become the foes of the higher life, with
whom he does daily battle. The land of Judaea is an ideal realm
lying on all sides of us. The temptations, the doubts, the
heroic resolves of Biblical heroes become transformed, and take
the hues of the present day. If the Bible were uninspired it
would not bear such translating and idealising. But because
it is, generally speaking, full of the principles of eternal truth,
it can be transposed from key to key, and responds to the call
of the heart in all ages and under all circumstances. Indeed,
this distinction holds not only in the case of religious literature,
but of all literature, art, and music. Even in the presentations
to sense, perception and sensation are in inverse proportion
one to the other. That which we see clearly is that which
does not strongly rouse the emotions. Love is blind. And in

472 EXPLORATIO EVANGELICA

all the arts those who can clearly criticise are not those who
produce great works ; nor are those who intensely enjoy at all
likely to have clear and sound theoretical views. The eternal
antithesis of right knowledge and free activity holds in all
fields of experience. Thus from the individual and subjective
point of view, a strong sense of the inspiration of Scripture is
likely to be nearer to the truth than a view which combines
a spirit of criticism with defective education and want of
historic training.

If we regard the Christian Scriptures from the external
point of view, and not merely (as we have thus far looked
upon them) as means of personal help and edification, we shall
find them to claim our attention in three aspects : first as the
classical works of religion, second as inspired, and third as
accompaniments and expressions of the life of the Christian
Church in all ages. We will consider these aspects in turn.

Education must be either scientific or classical. Scientific
education makes us conversant with fact and the explanation
of fact. Classical education brings us into contact with what is
best in the thoughts and the deeds, the writings, the art, and the
institutions of past ages. The word classical has, it is to be
feared, become weighted with narrow and unsatisfactory mean-
ing. It has been applied exclusively to the literature and art
of Greece and Rome, as contrasted with those of modern
Europe. Classical architecture has been opposed to Gothic
architecture, and classical poetry to that of the modern or
romantic schools. Perhaps only in relation to music does the
word classical imply what is really best. It is, however, a pity
thus to misuse a word which cannot be replaced. It should
stand for what is most human and most permanent in the
various activities and productions of man ; that which goes
deep beneath the surface of human nature to the roots of our
common humanity, and so must abide unsurpassed for all
time.

It is because they possess this mark that the great writers
of Greece, poets, historians, philosophers, are the very type of
classicality. The characters of Homer are not mere Greeks,
IhiI men of all time. The parting between Hector and
Andromache, the meeting <>r Odysseus and Nausicaa, are as

THE INSPIRATION OF SCRIPTURE 473

fresh to-day as when they were firsl recited, because they are
of profound human interest. When plays of ^Eschylua and
Euripides are revived on a modem stage, in spite of all incon-
gruities, they interesl and move the hearers, because, though
motive and incident may be foreign to modern cars, yet we
feel the characters to be full of ideal humanity. So Thucy-
didee, in his history of the civil and military affairs of the
Greek states, makes us feel that tiny are only special cases of
the action of permanent political forces working according to
eternal law. And so the philosophy of Plato, though in many
ways intensely Greek, has given birth to a hundred philo-
Bophies in all ages and in many countries. It retains its
interest and vitality even into modern days. Therefore it is
classical

Thus in literature and art the models left us by Greece
are classical As regards law, Home is the classical country;
and as regards religion, especially religion regarded on the
side of practice, the classical race is that of the Jews. "No
people," writes Matthew Arnold,, " ever felt so strongly as the
people of the Old Testament, the Hebrew people, that conduct
is three-fourths of our life and our largest concern. No people
i ver felt so strongly that succeeding, going right, hitting the
mark in this great concern was the way of peace, the highest
possible satisfaction. . . . There are, indeed, many aspects of
the not ourselves; but Israel regarded one aspect of it only,
that by which it makes for righteousness." Thus as regards
religion Israel is more to be trusted than any ancient nation,
is more authoritative and more classical. Of the Old Testa-
ment certain portions possess supreme importance. The
writings of the later Isaiah and many of the Psalms are
among the highest and noblest utterances of the religious
consciousness, and must for all time be regarded as full of
divine inspiration. In fact, as comets are drawn out of their
course by the powerful attraction of the planets, so these
writings have been drawn from their narrower purpose, and
become part and parcel of the Christian religion.

It is usual among Christians to regard the later chapters
of Isaiah as a literal prophecy of the events of the life of Jesus
and of his suffering. But such a view of them only partially

474 EXPLO RATIO EVANGELIC A

brings out their deeper meaning. To apply to Jesus Christ in
his earthly lite such phrases as " He shall not cry nor lift up,
neither shall his voice be heard in the streets," and " He hath
no form nor comeliness ; and when we see him, there is no
beauty that we should desire him," is to do our Master an
infinite injustice. He did make his voice heard in the streets,
and we cannot doubt that there was visible not only in his
words and character, but even in his person, the beauty of a
divine nature. Regarded as literal prophecy of the future, the
words of Isaiah are frequently inappropriate, even although
our accounts of the life of Jesus have certainly been modified
in order to bring them nearer to the language of the Prophet.
Yet we must needs feel how profound is the connection
between the words in Isaiah and the mission of Jesus. At
each returning Easter-time those words serve to embody the
most profound Christian feeling ami belief. The connection
between the Hebrew writer and the Christian Church is far
deeper than can be expressed by saying that he looked forward
to the same historic events on which we look back. As a
matter of fact, Jewish prophecy and the life of Jesus and the
faith of the Church are all alike rooted in eternal facts of the
spiritual life, in divine ideas which appear upon earth, now in
tins form and now in that. All have a certain consanguinity
based upon divine parentage. Thus if we take the utterances
of the Prophet as an eternal hymn of self-sacrifice, we best
understand them to whomsoever they were first applied in the
mind of the writer. And their application is not principally
to the historical Jesus, though even as applied to him they
have a wondrous illuminating power; but rather to the Christ
that works in the Church, and that was beginning in the later
ages of Judaism to dawn upon that nation which, among all
nations, had the most profound sense of spiritual fact and
eternal righteousness. The Prophet spoke that noble anthem
of the selfless lite, had lie hut known it, not only of the Jewish
people and of their Messiah, but also of Stephen and Paul, of
every Christian confessor and martyr, even of hundreds who
are still alive, and whom to-morrow and to-day we shall
despise and reject, because thej have not outward comelim

ami because We have not ryes to see the spiritual beauty

THE INSPIRA Tit kX i </■ Si RIPTl rRE 473

which lies under lives of commonplace self-denial, and of
wrongs silently endured for the sake of love to God and man.
It is thus that the nobler pints of the Jewish Scriptures are
classical in the field of religion.

But though Judaea is the classic land of religion, there
can be no doubt that Protestantism in our own and other
countries has gone much too far in setting Jewish religion on
a pinnacle quite by itself and regarding all other nations in
respect to religion much as the Jews themselves regarded
them, This has not always been the view of the Christian
Church. The Fourth Gospel is full of Platonism, and Aristotle
was for aces regarded almost as one of the greatest doctors of
the church. It is quite impossible to tolerate the view that
writings such as Ecclesiastes and Solomon's Song and Esther are
works of high religious value, while the Platonic Apology of

lies or the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius are mere pro-
fane literature. These latter embody a religion very different
from that of the Jews, but one in its way as lofty, and perhaps
more closely akin to modern Christianity. The best philo-
sophic religion of Greece and Borne is classical, as well as the
religion of the Jews. In the works of 1'lato, of Seneca, of
Epictetus there is a store of ethical and spiritual wisdom not
unworthy to rank as a supplement even to the teachings of
the Old Testament. Let us take a single passage of Epictetus,1
'"When thou hast heard these words, 0 young man, go thy
way and say to thyself, It is not Epictetus who has told me
these things (for whence did he come by them ?) but some
kind God speaking through him. For it would never have
entered into the heart of Epictetus to say these things, seeing
it is not his wont to speak so to any man. Come then, let us
obey Cod, lest God's wrath fall on us." The writer clearly
claims for his utterances, which indeed fully justify such a
claim, divine inspiration. There is no possibility, from the
rational and critical point of view, of denying inspiration to
Epictetus, while allowing it to the nameless authors of some of
the books of the Bible. In old days it was possible to con-
trast the Bible, taken as an inspired whole, with all profane
literature. But directly the critical spirit is introduced into
1 Diss. hi. 1, 36 seq. Trans. Long.

476 EXPLORATIO EVANGELICA

the consideration of the Bible that possibility vanishes. And
when we compare the inspiration of many passages in Epic-
tetus, or even of some of Plato's works, notably the Apology of
Socrates, with that of Ecclesiastes or Malachi, we cannot allow
that the heathen writers stand at a disadvantage. In the
Jewish religion we have, it is true, an unrivalled monitor as
regards righteousness. But in the religion, I do not say of
the Greeks, but of the monotheistic Greek philosophers, we
have elements of respect for man as man, of a love of the
divine ideas, of submission to the divine order, which are also
needed for the formation of the moral world.

It is certain that the Christian society was in early times
open to influence by all that was good in the Pagan world
around it. The extent of this influence is well shown in Dr.
Hatch's Hibbert Lectures. Like a growing plant Christianity
absorbed the moisture of the ground and the oxygen of the air
and worked them into its own substance. Precisely because
it was receptive it was fit to become universal. The writings
of the New Testament are thus doubly classical, since they
combine what is best in the religion of Israel with some that is
best in the religion of the Pagan world. It is strange that
there should be a feeling abroad that in allowing the debt of
St. John and St. Paul to Greek philosophy and religion we
diminish the value and splendour of Christianity: for it is
obviously impossible that the religion of so narrow and
peculiar a race as the Jews could be fit for universal accept-
ance. As a matter of fact Jewish religion has attracted but a
few proselytes in each age, and has never shown expansiveness
and catholicity. But from the fusion of Hebrew and of Greek
religion a true human faith did arise. And looking at
Christianity for a moment apart from the person of Christ, we
can see that the writings of the New Testament were fit to
become text-books of religion, and classics for all time, because
they embodied all that was best in the religions of previous
ages, and of all nations.

The value of a classical standard, whether in literature or
in art, cannot be over-estimated. And never could its value be

greater than in our day. The vast discoveries of science have
made us restless and self-confident, and disposed t<> think that

THE INSPIRA Th W OF SCRIPTURE 477

we are much better than our fathers, not in science only, but
in morality, in religion, and in conduct. Hence a tendency
strongly developed in England, perhaps still more clearly
visible in America, to individualise, to (rust the modern senti-
ment when it is opposed alike to tradition and to sound reason,
t<» follow whims and fancies when they are connected with
what we admire, though they be not founded on a solid basis,
or be inconsistent with the fixed relations of human society.
To us, therefore, it is a priceless boon to have religious books
of which the value and authority is generally conceded, books
raised above the arena of ethical quarrels, and in little danger
of suffering shipwreck in the conflicts of ideals. When our
Christianity declines through moral corruption or weakness,
we can always turn to the image of pure and lofty religion
reflected in the books of the New Testament; and if we
cannot revert to the type there exhibited, we can at least save
ourselves from departing further from it. Again and again in
the course of the Church's history has an impulse towards a
purer faith come from a perusal of the Christian Scriptures.
And especially in the dawn of modem history Europe witnessed
at once a return to the following of nobler models in art and
literature which was called the Renaissance, and a return to
the nobler lines of Christian religion which was called the
Reformation, the latter based entirely on fresh love and energy
poured into the study of the Scriptures.

Perhaps to some readers it will seem absurd to apply the
word classical, which is often used in no very lofty sense, to
writings like those of the Xew Testament. And in particular
it may seem in regard to the Founder of Christianity inadequate
to say that he is the great classical authority on religion.
And no doubt there is some justification for this objection,
the reason being that words commonly used in matters of
taste and literature are always inadequate when applied in the.
field of conduct. Conversely the word inspiration, which is
commonly used of religious impulse, seems fanciful and over-
strained when applied to any but the very noblest literature
and art. It is fair to say that the Jewish Scriptures are
classical ; but when we come to the Epistles of St. Paul we feel
that a deeper and more intense word is needed, and when we

478 EXPLO RATIO EVANGELICA

speak of the sayings of the Founder of Christianity we need
still loftier and more energetic terms. Yet if we take the
word classical to mean what is true for all time and all
countries, which reaches down to the roots of our common
human nature, then it can be no disparagement to call the
teaching even of the Sermon on the Mount classical.

The term which is usually used in reference to Scripture
is, however, not classical but inspired, At bottom the two
words do not mean anything inconsistent, and to the works
of great poets or great artists we might apply both with equal
justice. Classical is that recognised by good judges as the
best that man can do ; inspired is that which has in it most
of the divine. But since every good gift is from above, and
no man can do really well unless supported by divine aid, the
two adjectives should apply to the same productions of the
human spirit. But while the word classical is commonly
applied to works of fancy and imagination, the word inspired
is usually reserved for that which has a more direct bearing
upon human life and conduct.

Those who believe in the daily and hourly inspiration of
conduct can have little difficulty in believing that this inspira-
tion may take and does constantly take the form of an impulse
to write a book. But of course this inspiration may be of a
higher or of a lower kind. No book can be well and nobly
written save by the help of the Divine Spirit: but we easily
recognise that works which directly bear upon conduct are
inspired in quite another sense from works of fancy or imagin-
ation, or works of science or criticism or philosophy. The
inspiration of Shakespeare is not connected with practice;
whereas St. Francis, though of no noteworthy intellectual
capacity, was inspired in heart and will.

Those who look on human life in the light of religious
emotion will feel strongly the truth of the great saying of
Marcus A melius, that all things are full of divine providence.
Hence it is not for a moment to be fancied that any works
which have had and will have so vast an influence on the lite
of mankind as the New Testament could come into existence
without the control of Providence, which so worked thai
numberless generations should find there stimulus, hope, and

THE I.XSriR. i Th '. V < '/•• S( RIP Tl rRE 477

comfort in life and in death. And to thia end the writers
received inspiration of a lofty kind. Of the nature of this
inspiration we can judge from an examination of the works
themselves. We thus discover thai it did not instruct the
writers .1- to the facts of physical science; it did not, again,
inform them after any preternatural Fashion in regard to
historical facta

In reality it is far from being surprising that inspiration
does not make the writers of the Gospels accurate as to fact.
For this is entirely in accordance with our experience in
matters of the kind. The historical writer who is scientific in
his treatment and accurate in his statements of fact is seldom
the writer who imparts to us wisdom in the choice of com
of conduct or a stimulus to pursue that which is best. The
earnest moralist or the inspired teacher is at the opposite
end of the intellectual scale from the scientific historian.
- -untie history is colourless, but the history which bears
upon life must be clad in the rainbow hues of imagination and
of enthusiasm. We may therefore fairly say that, had the
Evangelists been accurate in their reports, it would have been
a miracle from the psychologic point of view.

And it is equally clear, from an examination of our
Gospels, that inspiration did not in any way miraculously
revive in the minds of the writers the teachings and doings of
the Founder. On the contrary, indeed, we are astonished,
considering how few of the deeds and the words of our Lord
are recorded, that it is possible that so discrepant accounts of
them can have arisen in the Church in the course of half a
century. There can be no doubt that any observant and
sensible man, who had received a Greek education, and yet
had been a disciple of Jesus, could have written after the
Crucifixion a far fuller and more accurate account of the
Founder's life than any that we possess, or than the wisest of
critics can ever hope now to construct. To the historical
student such a work would seem of infinitely greater value
than our meagre and often untrustworthy records. But
perhaps we may apply in this case the saying that the foolish-
ness of God is wiser than men. We cannot doubt that for the
life of the Church through future ages, the kind of record

480 EXPLORATIO EVANGELICA

which we possess is better than anything more accurate or
more complete. Our four Gospels, as they stand, are marvel-
lously adapted for the future which awaited them. That they
are better adapted to that future than any other kind of
record could be, it is of course impossible to assert. No one
could judge in such a matter who had not faculties and
knowledge far greater than those of men. But we can see
that our fourfold cord of story is stronger and better than a
single line, giving us, as it does, infinite opportunities of com-
parison and induction, liberating us, as it does, from the slavery
of the letter, and giving us at every point the power of escape
from the temptation to bibliolatry.

Let any one consider how we should be placed if a
Thucydides had given us a complete and chronologically
accurate account of the life of our Founder, and that account
had so superseded all others that they had become obsolete
and disappeared. Then we should never have any hope of
distinguishing between the words of the historian and those
of his subject ; the divine grace of Christ would be for ever
imprisoned in an earthen vessel ; pedantry would block in the
very roots of our religion. As it is, by using now this Gospel
and now that, we can, as with the various placings of a quad-
rant, make observations of the vague and far-off" personality of
Christ as of an unapproachable mountain.

The fact is that we may find in the production and
existence of our sacred books an example of the process which,
when it is observed in the world of life, is called the adaptation
of organs to functions not yet developed. The wing of the
bird must pass through a long course of preparation with ;i
view to flight before it can be of use for flight to its possessor.
The brain and the hand of the savage are instruments far too
delicate and complicated for him to use properly : their use is
gradually revealed as he rises in the scale of civilisation. So
our sacred writings are adapted, not to the early Christians
only, but to all time. Many things in them lay unappreciated
for ages, but now are understood and valued. Many things in
them are not yet understood and valued as they will lie here-
after. It is not for ordinary man thus to write for times
outside his experience, but only for man when specially aided

THE INSP1RA Tli >.V ( >/■ S( RIPTL rRE 481

ami inspired. Ami auch La the Inspiration of the New
Testament. And among the numerous lives of ('luist in cir-
culation, the instinct of the Church, divinely guided, selected
such as were adapted to he of greatest permanent use, and
consigned the rest to oblivion. The works thus chosen were
not by any miracle preserved from redaction, from interpolation
and corruption, but were by God's ever-present grace propa-
gated and preserved to be for all time a light and a guide to
the faithful.

Almost the same observations will apply to the Pauline
and other Kpistles. The writers of them wrote in consequence
of a divine impulse and with divine assistance, and the
divinely-guided instinct of the Church selected these Epistles
rather than others for preservation among the Christian sacred
1 looks. Yet since the Spirit of God in the Church, like the
( 'native Spirit in the World, acts largely, and not on the lines
of human wisdom, it may be that among the lost works of the
early Church are some which would seem to us of nobler and
more spiritual character than some of the works which have
been preserved to us. But are we, after all, adequate judges
of what is expedient not merely to us, but for all time, and
among all nations ?

Such views as these are fatal not merely to the infallibility
of the Scriptures of the New Testament, but to their establish-
ment as an outward and final standard of appeal in matters of
doctrine. These writers had no superhuman knowledge, nor
any superhuman virtue. "Who they were and when they
wrote must remain in many cases doubtful. Critics will dis-
cuss these matters as they please, and view may succeed view
and theory theory in perpetual and kaleidoscopic succession.
Such questions are of no great importance in regard to conduct.
These books were given by the good providence of God to the
early Christian Church, and for ages served to maintain the
faith and the piety of thousands.

An interesting parallel to the change of view which the
Protestant Churches must sooner or later accept in regard to
Scripture will be found in the change of view which they have
already accepted in regard to the Apostles' Creed.

By some early Christian writers, especially in the Eoman

31

482 EXPLORATIO EVANGELIC A

Church, the authority. of the Apostles' Creed was regarded as
stronger and more decided than that of the books of the New
Testament. The formula was regarded as having been com-
posed by the Apostles in conclave, and as supported by all
their combined authority. " If," writes Ambrose, " it is not
even allowable to take anything from, or add anything to, the
writings of one Apostle, surely we must not take from or add
to the Creed, which has been handed down to us as the work
of the Apostles united." x When Erasmus attacked the
tradition which attached the Creed to its apostolic basis, he
scandalised not only the Catholics, but even the Protestants.
But in this case the power of historic criticism soon prevailed,
and the Protestant communions acknowledged that the Creed
must be received not on the faith of apostolic origin, but in
virtue of its truth and its consonance to Scripture and reason.
Yet it did not on that account lose its vogue with them, but it
was retained and insisted upon by nearly all of them. In the
same way the Scriptures of the New Testament, after criticism
has done its worst, will remain as the most valuable teachers
in the matter of belief, and the best guides in the practical life
of religion.

Another instructive parallel may be instituted between the
results of criticism of the Bible and the results of recent
criticism of the Homeric poems. Before the days of Wolf it
was supposed that a blind poet, Homer of Chios, wrote the Iliad
and the Odyssey in their present form. No critic now would
accept such a view.2 The abundant Homeric criticism of recenl
times has caused the poet Homer to vanish from the field of
history. Nor does it seem in the least probable that critics will
ever come to an agreement as to which parts of the Iliad and
Odyssey are the original poems, and which parts subsequent
additions. Yet the Iliad and Odyssey, coming down to us thus
fatherless from an unknown age, are still to educated nun
precisely the same inestimable treasures which they have
always been. They are still regarded as inspired, in all the

1 Harnack, Apvst. (ihmh, ash, l.-rmilniM, ]>. 8.

- Perhaps Mr. Andrew Lang is destined to figure in history as the last up-
IihMit uf sDinctliinf,' like the did view. \Yt even Mr. Lang seems disposed I"
think that the Odyut y is qo1 by the poet of the Iliad, and that some parts of the
Iliad are interpolations, which is a practical surrender of the battle-field.

THE INSPIRATION OF SCRIPTURE 4S3

Bense in which they ever were so regarded. Any reader
of the poems who was oot a professed scholar would make a
mistake it' he allowed his enjoyment of the reading of the great
masterpieces to be clouded by consideration of theories of date,
of country, and of author. And even scholars go on balking of
"Homer," like human beings, and not, like pedants, of " the
composer of the original AchUl&is" though they may hold the
most advanced views as to the composition of the Iliad. It is
likely that the final results of criticism will he similar in case
of the New Testament.

We have yet to speak of the third aspect in which the
Bible, and especially the writings of the New Testament, may
he regarded. Not only does criticism allow these works to be
classical and to be inspired, hut it also fully recognises their
historical incorporation in the life of the Christian Church.

We cannot be certain as to the origin of each tale and each
saying, hut we can trace the working of each in the life of the
Christian community. We cannot be sure whence the Evan-
gelists derived them, hut we can be sure that they were
accepted by the community which continued the life of Christ
after he was taken away, and that they were turned by the
continual working of the Divine Spirit into a means of ethical
and spiritual progress for mankind. The writers of the Bible
do not speak to us from an unknown past ; they come down to
us mi the stream of time as still in a sense living and working
in the world and the Christian community. Every word of
Scripture has a history beginning at the moment of its setting
down and to be continued into the remote future of mankind.
In this matter of course the historically educated Christian
has an enormous advantage over the uneducated. In mere
subjective appreciation of Scripture the uneducated are as
good as others. But they have no means of testing their
experience by that of other times, and so are hemmed in by a
narrow limit, unless they have the good sense to be teachable
at the hands of those whose historic knowledge is more
complete.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

IN the Synoptists the word church, i/acXriala, occurs but twice.
It occurs in the commission to Peter,1 but in a context which
certainly belongs to a time long after the Crucifixion. It also
occurs in the command 2 addressed to the disciples that if they
had a complaint against a brother they should as a last re-
source make complaint to the Church. As no one can suppose
that Jesus in his lifetime set up an authority in his society to
supersede his own rule, we must assume one of two things :
either the passage is a later insertion, suggested by earl)
Christian custom, or else, if the phrase came from the Master,
he merely intended to endorse a Jewish custom by which dis-
putes were referred to the local synagogues. The following
phrase, " a heathen and a publican," is so thoroughly Jewish
that the second of these views seems preferable.

The writers of the New Testament generally used the
word Ecclesia, as it was commonly used by the Greeks around
them, to signify a society meeting at stated times for a common
and well-defined purpose. So the Church of Ephesus is the
body of Christians who met at Ephesus for Christian worship :
the Church of Laodicea is the body of the faithful who met
atLaodicea; and the like. We continually hear in thereto of
the doings of tins Church and that; we have constant reports
of the news of the churches. Ami St. Paul himself commonly
uses the word church in this sense, as when he speaks of the
Churches of I ralatia or Judiea or Macedonia, or of the " care of
1 Malt. wi. 18. - Matt, sviii. 17.

THE CA ■///> >/./C CHURCH 4 5

all the churches," though in some of the Pauline Epistles the
word, as we shall see, hears another meaning.

The earliest germ of organisation which we can trace in
the infant society arose quite naturally from the peculiar posi-
t ion and the high authority of the Apostles. These existed from
the first as a nucleus. But the meaning of the term Apostle
grew. St. Paul claimed to be, on the direct appointment of
his Master, an Apostle, and equal to any of them. In some
passages of the Xew Testament, as in Revelation xviii 20, we
see traces of the earliest division of the faithful into classes,
as apostles, prophets, or preachers, and saints.1 Here between
the Apostles and the mass of the faithful, the saints, we have
a separate class arising, of men conspicuous for gifts of preach-
in-- and for spiritual insight, who wandered from city to city
to exhort and encourage the faithful This primitive classi-
fication is familiar to the readers of Acts and of the Pauline
Epistles. It must have resembled that of the Methodist
society in its infancy. But a more solid and more durable
organisation began to take form before long, starting with the
presbyters, the elders or committee-men of the churches.

There were two sets of conditions which influenced the
form of the early Christian communities. Both sets had been
long in existence at the beginning of the Christian era. The
one set was Jewish, or belonged rather to the Jews dispersed
over countries other than Palestine, the Jews of the Diaspora.
The other was Greek, or rather Hellenistic, adapted to the
changed conditions which came over Greater Greece after
Alexander the Great. The Jews who were dispersed in small
colonies through the cities of Hellas and Macedon and Asia
were obliged in self-defence to organise themselves, or they
would have been lost amid the surrounding heathen. The
centre of the local organisation was the Synagogue, where
frequent meetings took place ; and in connection with the
Synagogue, councils of elders regulated the affairs of the com-
munities. Such organisation was a copy of that of the Greeks
and Syrians, who in the age between Alexander the Great and
Roman rule had developed elaborate systems of civic govern-
ment, with councils and popular assemblies, every city being
1 Cf. "Weizsilcker, Apostolk Age, i. p. 49.

486 EXP LOR A TIO E VA NGEL1CA

in lesser matters a self-governing unit, and passing decrees
which in smaller local affairs had the force of law. And the
abundant associations of later Greece, called crani and thiasi,
which were in character not civic but religious, which were
formed in order to promote the worship of some foreign deity,
imitated the cities in their organisations. The}' too had
officials, councils, a treasurer, and funds for the support of
poor members.

Thus the eastern half of the Roman Empire was at the
Christian era honeycombed with small communities, all de-
liberating, self-governed, with superintendents, treasurers, and
leaders. And so the Christian churches, as they spread over
Asia and Greece and Italy, had abundant examples of organ-
isation under their eyes. And the very terms bishop, pres-
byter, and deacon which were borne by the officials of the
churches were among the titles already used in the civil and
religious societies of the Levant.

The first beginnings of Christian organisation were thus
determined beforehand. And from these beginnings the organ-
isation proceeded, becoming less democratic and disjointed, the
power of the bishop steadily increasing, and the presbyters
being more clearly divided from the people, until the whole
frame of the Church, with its headquarters at Rome, had
become hardened and compacted, and capable of resisting even
the tremendous force wielded by the Roman Empire.

The basis of later Christian organisation was the institu-
tion of the Episcopacy, coupled with a belief in apostolical
succession. In the second century the power of the bishops,
more especially in the Pauline churches of Asia Minor, became
fixed on a solid foundation ; and soon after, the bishops repre-
sented the churches in their relations to the surrounding
heathen, and obedience to the bishop became the first essential
of Christian self-discipline. Nothing in the whole history of
the Church is more noteworthy than the way in which,
almost from the first, she built an organisation out of
chaos. No doubt she was greatly aided by the custom of
self-government in lesser matters, which the Unmans had
allowed to the Greek cities of Asia: and by the familiarity
of the Asiatic Greeks with the organisation of the thiasi. J'>ut

THE < A ///< >UC CHI 'RCH

for the spreading and aggressive Christian society, .1 feu more
rigorous Bvstem of governmenl was necessary than was suf-
ficient for the local thdasi And the only possibility of the
organisation of the society lay in the heaping of power on the
bishop. It Is true that representative systems of governmenl
had arisen in later Greece, in particular the Achaean League.
But Rome did not accept representative government ; all

ernmenl was in the hands of officers like pro-praetors and
pro-consuls appointed to rule by the highest powers, and
representing them to a subject population. What the Emperor
was to the Roman Empire, that was Jesus Christ to bis Church.
And so Bome system had to 1"- discovered whereby the Church
should be governed by direct representatives of the [nvisible
Head. The system invented, doubtless by a divine inspiration,
was that of apostolic succession.

In the course of the second century the Episcopal order
became the basis of discipline, saving the infant society from
a thousand dangers which might have been fatal: from perils
arising from absurd views and unregulated enthusiasms in
the Church itself, and from perils which came from the heathen
society around. Unless the hand of the bishops had held the
rudder, the ship of the Christian faith would have drifted at
large, and become wholly unmanageable. And at quite an
early period of church history, the rulers of the Roman Church,
in consequence of the ascendancy of the ruling city, and the
statesmanship which they displayed, had attained a predomi-
nant position among the churches, and ventured to interpose
when they saw danger approaching any of their less firmly
founded neighbours.

Thus it is absurd to suppose that the position gained by
the bishops of Rome was the result of mere grasping ambition
and worldly vanity. It was the divinely-appointed means
whereby a certain unity was secured to the Church. There
was a fair trial of strength for three centuries between the
Christian Church and the Roman Empire, and the Church
would scarcely have come off victorious, unless she had
borrowed something of the organisation of the Empire, and
occupied the capital. Bishop Lightfoot writes:1 "Though the
1 Dissertations on tin: Apostolic Age, p. 209.

4SS EXPLORATIO EVANGELICA

grounds on which the independent authority of the episcopate
was at times defended may have been false and exaggerated,
no reasonable objection can be taken to later forms of ecclesi-
astical polity because the measure of power accorded to the
bishop does not remain exactly the same as in the Church of
the sub-apostolic age. Nay, to many thoughtful and dis-
passionate minds even the gigantic power wielded by the
popes during the Middle Ages will appear justifiable in itself
(though they will repudiate the false pretensions on which it
was founded, and the false opinions which were associated
with it), since only by such a providential concentration of
authority could the Church, humanly speaking, have braved
the storms of those ages of anarchy and violence." It is with
great satisfaction that I transcribe this passage, which ex-
presses the acceptance by so great an authority as Dr. Light-
foot of the principle of relativity in religion.

The false pretensions and false opinions of which the

writer speaks were unfortunately part and parcel of the

matter. If the institution of bishops was to be defended, it

must have a doctrinal basis, and history must be adapted to

it. Bishop Lightfoot has shown that the doctrinal basis arose

long after the spread of the institution itself. " No distinct

traces of sacerdotalism are visible in the ages immediately

after the Apostles." 1 The theory is not to be found in

Ignatius, nor in Iremeus ; but first in the Montanist Ter-

tullian. The reconstruction of history in favour of Episcopacy

was a long process. The Epistles to Timothy and Titus are

regarded by most modern critics as not authentic. Parts at

least of the Ignatian Epistles are also not genuine. The

history of Episcopacy by M. Jean Peville has shown clearly to

what extent the records of the early churches, notably that of

Rome, had to be modified and interpreted, in order to establish

,i regular uninterrupted succession of bishops from the Apostles

downwards. Pedigrees have at all times been very liable to

interpolation and reconstruction for practical reasons. And

the spiritual pedigrees of the early bishops are no exception

to the rule. They belong not to actual history, but to ideal

history, to history constructed in order to embody ideas.

J Dissertations, pp. 211, 217, l'19.

THE CATHOLIC CHURCH 489

So far we have Bpoken of the Churches; we must dow
burn to the Church. In some of the Epistles attributed to
St. Paul, especially those to the Ephesians and ( 'oKssians, we
find the word church used in a new and an ideal sense. The
roots of this conception go back beyond Paul to his Master
and to ideas of the dews and Greeks in the Hellenistic age.

It was part of the Messianic beliefs of the Jewish race,
that when their redemption came, a glorious theocracy should
lie set up on earth with Jerusalem for capital and centre,
which should endure for ages in full Lustre, and realise upon
earth some of the order of heaven. Thus in Daniel (ii. 44)
we read, " In the days of these kings shall the God of heaven
set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed." Such was
the expectation of the days of the Maccabees; and throughout
the apocryphal literature of succeeding times this hope of a
kingdom of God on earth recurs at every turn, and serves to
console the Jewish people amid Syrian wars and under Roman
oppression. In the Book of Revelation, the greater part of
which is taken up with Jewish eschatology under a thin
veneer of Christianity, we have a magnificent description of
the New Jerusalem, which should come down from heaven to
earth to be the fit metropolis for a divine kingdom, " having
the glory of God: and her light was like unto a stone most
precious, even like a jasper stone, clear as crystal; and had a
wall great and high, and had twelve gates, and at the gates
twelve angels, and names written thereon, which are the
names of the twelve tribes of the children of Israel."

The last phrase indicates clearly enough how closely the
first author of the Book of Revelation adhered to Jewish
ideals.1 The political predominance of the sons of Israel is
to him an essential feature of the divine kingdom. But when
the Christian Messiah came, not triumphant over foreign foes,
but suffering and dying, these notions of a splendid political
future had to be baptized into his death, to die with him, that
with him they might rise into a new and spiritual life.

Jesus did not call the society which he intended to found,

1 Some of the best German authorities hold that the greater part of the book
was written by a Jew, who was not even a Christian. Whether or not this was
the ease, it is certain that much of the work shows no trace of Christian teaching.

49Q EXPLORATIO EVANGELIC A

and did found, the Church, but the " Kingdom of Heaven "
and the " Kingdom of God." Into the sense in which these
phrases were used, we cannot here enter.1 There can be little
doubt that the Founder of Christianity intended to establish
a theocracy on earth. And as a matter of history the result
of his life and death was the establishment of a theocracy.
But how little the organisation which came into existence
corresponded to the teaching of the historic Jesus, we can see
by turning to his words cited by Matthew, " Ye know that
the princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them, and
they that are great exercise authority upon them. But it
shall not be so among you : but whoso will be great among
you, let him be your minister ; and whosoever will be chief
among you, let him be your servant." If Jesus uttered these
words, they prove conclusively that at the time he did not
think of an organised and hierarchic church. This is the
regular course of history. In exactly the same way St.
Francis called the heads in his community " servants," but the
Franciscan " servant-general " became in time the " general "
of the order, and the " provincial servants " became " pro-
vincials." Amid the faults of human nature and the oppres-
sion of material surroundings no divine ideal ever takes
perfect form on earth. The earthly is but a faint and blurred
image of the heavenly.

In the Revelation, the New Jerusalem from above is spoken
of as the bride of Christ. Similarly of the Christian ideal
commonwealth the author of the Epistle to the Ephesians,
who may probably be regarded as St. Paul, speaks sometimes
as the earthly body of Christ, of which all true Christians are
members, each in his several capacity; sometimes as the bride
of Christ, " without spot or wrinkle or any such thing." In
this matter, as in so many others, Paul, who did not see
Jesus Christ in the flesh, interprets him better than his life-
long disciples. The ideal Church of Paul is the Kingdom of
Heaven of which liis Master s]K-aks, the communion of those
who, under the leadership of Christ, press on towards the
higher life, determined to overcome the world, the flesh, and
the devil by the grace of God, and by full reliance on the
1 Some of tin1 most suggestive pages of Em iiununuv devoted to this sul>joct.

THE CA THOLIC CHI rR{ 7/ 4' - '

divine will. It has, however, been suggested, and qoI without
reason, thai sum.' elements, al leasl in the Pauline doctrine of
the idea] Church, may have been unconsciously taken from the
Stoic notion of a fellowship, or TroXiTelo, including all the

good.

The New Jerusalem has not yet descended out of Heaven ;
the Bride of Christ has never ye1 made her abode on earth.
But all through history we see a process of becoming, of
partial embodiments of the ideal Church, sometimes wider and
sometimes narrower, sometimes local and temporary, some-
times possessing mure of the elements of duration and univer-
sality. An idea may be embodied as well in organisation as
in doctrine or in art. And seen in the light of the idea, the
most imperfect attempt to embody it may seem so glorious
that whole communities may be able to live by it, and martyrs
may be eager to die for it. And so there arose in early
times the notion of a visible Catholic Church. This may be
first traced, according to able theologians, in the third
century. In the early Eoman Creed1 the phrase used is
■ Holy Church"; and even when the word Catholic was first
introduced it implied nothing visible, but the universal church
of those who believed. But at the time when our Apostles'
Creed was formulated it had already acquired another force,
and was applied to " the orthodox churches, which, under
definite organisation, had grouped themselves round the
apostolic foundations, and especially round Rome." And so
the word church ceased by degrees to signify the unseen body
of those united by love and faith to Jesus Christ, and came to
imply a visible unity of those who held in common certain
doctrines and were included in a certain organism. And
Christian bishops were ready to affirm that as there had been
in the ark of Noah unclean beasts, so there must be in the
( rhurch unworthy and sinful members.

Perhaps none of the working ideas which arose out of the
Pauline teaching, not even the doctrine of the Lord's Supper,
has had so mighty an effect in the history of Christianity as
the doctrine of the visible Church. Without it Christianity
could scarcely have acquired an outline hard enough to resist
1 See above, Chapter XI.

492 EXPLORATIO EVANGELICA

persecution from without and schism within. Had the Church
not been strongly organised it would have been crushed by
the mighty machine of the Roman Empire : would certainly
never have been able to take its place in the constitution of a
new order after the barbarian invasions. To us moderns it
seems that with the notion of the visible Catholic Church
there was mingled from the first much of materialism and
much of superstition. Certainly there was built into the
rising fabric a vast deal of illusion, many elements of tem-
porary value without any eternal significance. In this case,
as in a thousand other events of history, the weakness of
God has been stronger than men, and the foolishness of God
wiser than men. The early Church accomplished her mighty
mission, and brought to the harbour, through continual storms,
the ark of God.

The Church of which Paul speaks as the bride of Christ,
the body of Christ on earth, must not be confused with any
visible organisation. That in days before the Reformation it
should have been so confused, even by the greatest Christian
teachers, cannot surprise us. Even then there were in the
East great Christian churches which, as well as the Church
centring about Rome, belonged to the body of Christ ; but
horizons were narrow and travelling rare, so that it was not
strange that in all Western Europe the Roman Church was
regarded as the one body inspired by the Holy Spirit, and
holding the keys of all Christian tradition and belief. And
we can well sympathise with the noble priests and laymen,
crusaders and monks, who felt themselves bound to put their
lives in peril and to sacrifice everything in the cause of unity,
that the robe of Christ might not be divided, and the bride of
Christ might not suffer injury.

Something of the same passion for the Roman Church may
well survive in countries such as Spain, where the right of the
Roman Church has seldom seriously been called in question,
except by those who have rejected Christianity. Rut members
of the Teutonic races at least are obliged by the facts of
history to take quite a different view. They may adhere to
Catholic doctrine and organisation, may regret the course
taken l>y tin- liVlbrmatinn, or oven regret its occurrence, but

THE CATHOLIC CHURCH 493

they cannot, without wilful blindness, deny that true followers
of Christ may 1"' found outside the bounds of their own com-
munion. They must allow that the earthly body of Christ
extends beyond the limits of the Roman Catholic Church, or
eveu of any Episcopal communion.

In fact, since the Reformation it has become a si kit
impossibility to define the limits of the visible Church. It is
a mere question of opinion, of definition, of the use of words.
Before that time the word excommunication had a definite
meaning; now it has little, except for those who retain the
pre- Information point of view. Christians can no longer be
distinguished by obvious external marks.

But the invisible and ideal Church remains what it wa-
in the days of Paul, the body which is inspired by the spirit
of Christ, and which continues his work in the world ; it is
still the bride of Christ, which he loves as himself, and for
which he died ; it is still the heavenly Jerusalem descending
out of Heaven from God ; and its membership is open to
every believer, whether he be credulous or sceptical, whether
he trusts to prayer or to faith or to active service, whether he
relies upon the sacraments or regards them as of secondary
importance.

Of course the Roman, and in a less decided way the
Anglican. Church is not content with a view like this, but
puts forward exclusive claims. These are based partly upon
reported sayings of Jesus Christ, partly upon asserted apos-
tolic succession, partly upon the test of fruits. It would
be unseemly, here at the end of my work, to attempt to
discuss these claims. No one who regards the Gospels from
the critical point of view can attach much value to the Roman
citation of detached texts. And apostolic succession cannot
be maintained as fact of objective history. The test of fruits
is more legitimate, and there can be little doubt that by this
test the Catholic claims will be in the long run accepted or
rejected by the modern world.

There is, however, another important appeal, the appeal
to the continued history of the Christian Church. Bui
this lies open, not to any branch of the Church in particular,
but to all branches. If we use the phrase Christian Church

494 EX FLO RATIO EVANGELIC A

in a wide sense, as including all who are conscientious
followers of Christ, then we shall see the true nature of
the appeal to history, which lies open to all Christians.
Just as the Americans can claim as their own the struggle for
the Great Charter, the glorious rise of parliamentary govern-
ment, Poitiers and Agincourt, so we can all claim a share in
our spiritual ancestry, and its noble deeds backward through
the ages. Romanist and Anglican have no more right to deny
the affiliation of the Puritans to Augustine and Paul than has
the Romanist to deny to the Anglican relationship to Anselm
and Becket, or the Puritan to deny to the Romanist legitimate
descent from the Apostles. All the branches join the same
stem, and the sap which has built them all up has come from
a common root through the same channels, though one branch
may bear more leaves, and another more flowers, and a third
more fruit.

The development of the Christian Church began on the
day when its Founder attracted his first disciple, and it has
gone on until this moment without interruption, though of
course not without crises. Not at any period has the Church
been either infallible or perfectly virtuous, but it has been
better at some times than others; it has had its times of
growth and its times of decay, its renewals of inspiration and
its subjections to sinister influences. Sometimes it has had
the appearance of external unity, though the internal unity has
never been complete. Sometimes the external form has been
manifold, never so manifold as in our own day, but in such times
perhaps the internal diversity is not greater than before. Put
never has the Founder's spirit been extinct. This is a
marvellous fact : a fact which makes the Christian Church an
unique phenomenon in history, with the single exception of
Islam. And the history of the Church is a record of the rise
and spread of ideas. Not of course that the ideas which it
embodies entirely change in successive ages. Many of them
have been working uninterruptedly from the beginning until
HOW. But they change their order and their aspect, adapting

themselves to new surroundings, and showing new sides of

their inner life. The species persists, but it is 80 changed

with changing circumstance as to be scarcely recognisable.

THE l '. / /'//( )UC CHI RCH 495

Of course ideas must coine through a personal channel,
and just as the lightning first strikes all the highesl spires
and pinnacles, bo the ideas come first to those who are in the
moral sphere most exalted. In the Christian ('lunch they
have come, not to prince-bishops nor to cardinals, but to the
monk in his cell, the friar in his labour, the doctor in his
cloister. And from those they have been adopted by bishop
and pope and leader who had the power of spreading them
amongst men. The hulk of mankind are never in any age
fit to be more than recipients at second hand of ideas. And
although the sacred hooks of Christianity have often heen the
source of ideas, they have not independently originated them:
it does not lie with the dead words of books to originate ideas,
hut with the spirit which inspired them.

It is the case with Christianity, as with all other organisms,
that the present condition is in the main a corollary of the past
history. In our own day the ideas which have been develop-
ing through ages are still contending for the mastery. Neither
Origen nor Tertullian is dead, neither St. Francis nor Luther
has passed away or departed from the Church. They, or the
ideas which they embodied, still serve to array hostile camps,
or to stimulate missionary energy. The churches and parties
of the present continue the schools and sects of the past, and
'•any on the eternal inner motion without which Christianity
would soon become a " fen of stagnant waters." Each party
consciously or unconsciously works at its mission of preserving
some fragment or side of a great truth. And only He who
overlooks the whole field can see which party is at any
moment most in the right or supporting the most important
cause. We can often see this in the far- distant past of
history; though we can judge by scarcely any test but that of
success. But as regards the present none of us can judge,
just as none of us can secure success. We are like the
common soldiers of a battle, who see clearly an enemy here
and there, and in the performance of a duty must slay him,
but have no means of judging how the day is going, or with
whom the final credit of winning the victory will rest.

And in the same way it goes on in the microcosm of the
individual life. We are born not merely into the Church but

496 EX PL ORA TIO E VA NGELICA

into a particular section of the Church, as leaves of a tree
spring not from the trunk but from one particular branch.
We are born Athanasians or Arians, Augustinians or Pelagians.
Lutherans or Calvinists.

It is our business as reasonable creatures to discern the
intimations of the divine impulse within us, and to distinguish
them from the mere urgings of vanity and selfishness ; to
perceive the ends to which they tend, and to try with all the
powers of our nature to attain those ends. Similarly it is our
business, by applying reason to history, to discern the origin
and meaning of the inherited tendencies which run in our
blood, and to find out the way to adapt those tendencies to
changed conditions of society. Of course all tendencies are
not alike good, and reason would be given to us to little
purpose if it did not in some degree help us to determine their
relative worth and their comparative importance. But in this,
as in all other investigations which bear upon conduct, it is
the active faculties which must school and impel the reason,
and not the reason which must dictate to the active faculties.

CHAPTER XXXIX

THE COBPOBATE CONSCIENCE

We have now reached the end of our task, having examined
in as much detail as space permitted the main theses of the
early Christian creed. Another chapter is added in order to
meet an objection which is sure to be made to the course and
tendency of the present work. It is sure to be said that its
tendency is too individualist, that it makes small account of
the relations of men to the society in which they dwell and
the race of which they are members. And as there is in the
intellectual atmosphere a great deal of collectivism, a general
striving to reach forward from the individual to the social
way of regarding religion, this objection may weigh heavily
with many readers. It seems therefore necessary to treat
very briefly of the religious relations between the individual
and the society. If I am weak on that side, it is desirable
that the "weakness should be clearly seen and not merely
inferred from omissions.

Readers must, however, bear in mind that my subject is
doctrine, not organisation or discipline. The question of the
place of authority in religion is a vast one : I am here con-
cerned only with authority in relation to belief and doctrine.

In these days we hear a great deal as to the opposition
between the individual and the social point of view, in
political economy, in ethics, and in religion. To call a view
individualist is with many people to reject it as worthless
and out of date. The truth is that the individual and the
social standpoint are both necessary, as complementary the one

32

493 EXPL0RAT10 EVANGELIC A

of the other. The one is based on the facts of individual
consciousness and conduct, the other on the facts of social
life. It is utterly impossible that in any time or country
one should prevail exclusively and the other disappear. But
in some ages the one and in some the other has wider vogue,
and seems more in the line of progress. Since the French
Revolution, and even since the Reformation, individualist
politics and ethics have in England and America become more
and more prevalent. We now see the beginnings of a strong
reaction, which may last long and go far. But to suppose that
the return to the social point of view will make the individual
point of view superfluous or dangerous is an absurdity.

Even the religion which is supposed to leave least scope
for individual freedom, that of the Church of Eome, fully
allows the authority of the private conscience. " Our great
internal teacher of religion," writes Cardinal Newman,1 " is
our conscience. Conscience is a personal guide, and I use it
because I must use myself; I am as little able to think
by any mind but my own as to breathe with another's lungs.
Conscience is nearer to me than any other means of know-
ledge. And as it is given to me, so also it is given to others ;
and being carried about by every individual in his own breast,
and requiring nothing besides itself, it is thus adapted for the
communication, to each separately, of that knowledge which is
most momentous to him individually."

Cardinal Newman then, representing one side of the
Roman Church, would seem in the last result to preach
individualism, that it is the first duty of each of us to be true
to the voice within, to save his own soul. And the same
view is expressed by one of the best representatives of modern
Anglicanism, the late Dean Church, who lias maintained that
the end of life is the formation of character, rather than the
production of any visible results in the world. And in facl
all this, and far more than all this, is comprised by the Founder
of Christianity in one of his most pregnant savings, "The
Kingdom of Heaven is within you."- Here we touch, as

1 a i-ii,ii mar oj Assent, <•«!. 8, p. 384.

- It is roniinoiily thought that the rendering among you is more correct ; lmt
tlic English revisers retain within you.

THE CORPORATE CONSCIENCE

Matthew Arnold has well said, the great "secret of Jeg
and the n><>t of the power which Christianity has exercised In
the world. Truly, if we glance at the history of bhe faith of
Christ in past ages, we need not fear that the motive powei of
individualist religion will fail or prove incapable of dominating
conduct in the future as it has dominated it in the past,

Fet though religion is based on the conscience, and with-
out conscience there could be no religion, religion is by no
means a purely individual matter. If it were, any systematic,
any scientific treatment of religion would be impossible.
Individual religion has satisfied many a keen and earnest
Christian. It has led many and many fine natures through a

1 life to a fair death. To any religion of mere convention
or tradition it is as superior as light is to darkness. Yet on
many sides it is weak and unsatisfying. Probably few, even of
those in whom the voice of conscience is clearest and strong
can pass through life without needing another and more
outward monitor and comforter. In times of illness or of
depression the perception of the inner voice often grows weak
and the temper despondent, and a longing comes to see duty
objectively rather than merely to feel it. Feelings come and
go ; and a strong and consistent life should rest on some more
outward and permanent basis. For comparison we may take
the facts of physical exercise. In any kind of exercise the
muscles and nerves of the body are brought into play, and it
is this which makes the goodness of athletics. Yet merely to
ply these nerves and muscles with the help of ropes and
levers, pursuing no outward purpose, would lead to a hypo-
chondriac state, which could not be consistent with real vigour.
We need the outward mark, the visible feat, before we can
lose ourselves in the sport.

And further, as for really healthy physical exercise the
presence of friends and competitors is necessary, so religion
cannot satisfy unless it has a social side. We need to talk
of our purposes in life to others, to stimulate them and be
stimulated by them. We need common worship, common
rites and ceremonies, common doctrines. If religion be a
secret between the soul and its Maker, it cannot be communi-
cated to others, can do no work in the world, is cut off from

EXPLORA TIO E V ANGELIC A

all the sweet offices of friendship and charity, without which
life is dull and a continual strain. Healthy religion will be
making terms with science, throwing fresh lights on history,
inspiring poetry and art, forming a basis for social union,
stimulating to enterprises of philanthropy, inaugurating schemes
of missionary zeal. It will meet us at every turn in the
path of life, and not merely hover in the background of con-
sciousness.

Among the forces which tend to the enlargement of
personal belief, an important place must be assigned to mere
conservative feeling. In less stirring times there has been
no great need to insist on the value of traditional religion.
The power of tradition in the blood is quite strong enough,
often indeed is so powerful as to make progress but slow and
doubtful, and to prevent the intrusion of new ideas. But in
our great cities, where dwell multitudes cut off from all
tradition and from the daily influences which act like sea and
air and earth, multitudes engaged in a never-ceasing struggle for
existence, it is evident that the forces of dissolution will have
enormous advantage, and ethical aberrations will be great and
frequent. In such places almost any external test of religion
is better than none ; nor must we criticise with undue severity
even defective standards, provided they restrain the license of
individual opinion.

But after all, it is useless ever to preach conservatism.
We are all ready to allow the value of conservatism in general,
but the moment any sentiment of conservatism comes in the
way of what we hold to be a good movement, we immediately
regard it as mere prejudice and obstruction. So it must be
by the very constitution of man : else would no progress ever
have been possible. It is only the languid and the indifferent
who are ready to give up their best hopes and strongest impulses,
because they find them opposed by a weight of conservatism.
Thus, after allowing the value of conservatism, we find that
little reliance can be placed on it for checking the license of
individual opinion. We have to turn to external checks of
a more definite and intelligible kind. We have to consid. 1
the importance to religious doctrine of external authority,
whether the authority of individuals, of books, or of societies.

THE CORPORATE CONSCIENCE 501

Lei us speak of these three kinds of authority in turn. And
firsl of persona

The function of the religious teacher arises from the facl
that some men are far more Busceptible than others to spiritual
experience. As some of us are Longer -sighted than others,
as some have a musical ear which in others is wanting, so
some lie open to the influences of the higher life, while the
mind and soul of others, whether by inherited tendency or
acquired habit, are partially closed to them.

In another work1 I have endeavoured to set forth tin-
natural history of personal testimony and of authority in
general statements which will apply to all religion, to the
faith of Buddha or of Islam as well as to the various forms of
faith to be found among Christians. I now propose to limit
the discussion to Christianity only.

As regards the reception of religious truth on testimony
there is little to be said. All Christians, except possibly
here and there a Quaker or a Barticularist, will agree that
they have much to learn from Christian teachers and writers
who were wiser and more clear-sighted than themselves. By
reading religious books, in listening to wise discourse, in con-
versing with valued friends, we all extend the limits of the
religion of experience beyond the narrow limits of our personal
horizons. We may not choose to be called the disciples of
any particular religious teacher, or any school of religious
doctrine, yet we must needs have much to learn from the
religious experiences of others. It would be taking far too
favourable a view of the intellect of the great mass of mankind
to suppose that they could personally work out from the facts
of experience and history, each one a creed for himself. This
is neither possible nor to be wished. By far the best thing
for ninety-nine men out of a hundred is to find a leader worthy
to be followed, and loyally to follow him, preserving some slight
right of deviation here and there. And if the leader be
worthy, his scheme of conduct and his creed will lie closely
connected together, so that those who copy the conduct will be
naturally attracted by the creed.

In the second place, we have an external standard in the
1 Faith and Conduct, chaps, xxvii., xxviii.

502 EXPLO RATIO EVANGELICA

existence of classical and inspired books on religion, especially
the Sacred Scriptures, to which we can recur to check the
crude tendencies of our half-developed natures by the applica-
tion of a standard made for all time and accepted by all those
who in the world have been most eminent for religious feeling
and noble practice. Whenever we compare our own thoughts
and words and deeds with those there set forth, we cannot but
feel how infinitely we fall below the level which they set up
as not merely attainable but even attained.

Thirdly, we have to consider in a broad aspect the
authority of the Church. This authority may act within us
on our reasons, or on our social and religious feelings, or from
without by an organised system. In the first aspect it is the
history of the Church which will affect our beliefs, in the
second and third aspects the Church as existing fact. We are
not subjected, like the brutes, to the stern action of the law of
the elimination of the unfit, but can look behind us and around
us and cure our unfitness by the study of history, by observ-
ing the course of the world, so that we may learn what things
tend to good, and what things to destruction. By reason and
by imagination we learn to let the ills which happen to others
save us from evil, and we learn to pursue the good, when it is
not obvious at mere sight whither it will tend. The testi-
mony of the Christian Church lies open to our inspection, and
his boldness would be not merely rash but almost insane who
should suppose that the ideas and principles which have for
nearly two thousand years inspired the best and noblest deeds
of Christendom are worthless, except of course in those cases
in which the growth and spread of knowledge has artificially
raised us to a higher level than that of our ancestors.
Christian doctrine which lias been evolved by the Church
• luring its existence must have a real basis, though it be
adulterated by the imperfect knowledge of past days with
worthless elements.

hi actual life it is far less from a study of history thai
men form their creed than from a sort of contagion working
through the, religious association with which they are con-
nected. The sense of a common impulse and common aims

plays a far larger pari in the inner history of some men than

THE CORPORATE CONSCIENCE 503

of others. To some an inner sense of loyalty to a visible
church is an overpowering impulse; they feel thai their
religious life would wither and die if cut off from a constanl
social stimulus. Others have more power to Btand alone.
But even they are necessarily the stronger and the happier
for feeling that their religious life is but a thread in a vast
cable which draws in a particular direction.

All of the enlargements of private creed ami checks upon
individual aberrations of which I have as yet spoken act from
within. There is also an actual control which is exerted from
without, and which is especially valuable in case of those who
cannot trust their own clearness of sight or impartiality of
feeling. The community has its rights as well as the in-
dividual, and has the right to impose on the individual the
wider standards and more generalised impulses which come of
experience and of a common life. Perhaps in a society less
anarchic than ours, a society which the next century may well
see, this outward control may again become a reality. Once
more there may be a church, and not a mere congeries of
religious societies. I cannot in this work deal in a full or
satisfactory way with religious organisation, but I hope to say
enough to show that I do not undervalue its importance.

As men live not in isolation but as members of society,
we have to do not only with an individual but also with a
corporate conscience. Of this corporate conscience it is not
easy to speak in language so clear and definite as that which
we can use in speaking of the individual. And it may be
asked to which of the various bodies to which a man belongs
this conscience should be attributed. Should we speak of the
common conscience of the church or of the city, of the nation
or of the human race ? Or have not each of these in a sense
a conscience of their own ] And is it not perhaps a mere
metaphor to speak of a corporate conscience, seeing that a
conscience like consciousness implies an individuality ?

There have been times in the history of the world when
such objections as these would not be raised, or would seem
frivolous. To the member of a Greek city-state, or to a
citizen of early Rome, the conscience of the civic life would at
once and almost without a struggle overbear that of the

504 EXPLORATIO EVANGELIC A

individual. The Spartans at Thermopylae were not so much
individuals as a part of Sparta : every Roman republican felt
that he was due non sibi scd patriae. And in the Middle
Ages religious unity had in part taken the place of that of
the state. Every member of the Catholic Church felt himself
to be a part of the living body of Christ ; and that whole body
had within certain limits one set of ideals and purposes. But
since the Reformation the social way of feeling and thinking
has to a great extent passed away. It survives as patriotism
among many citizens of countries like France, Italy, and
Russia, who feel that the nation is in many ways a living
personality, worthy of all self-sacrifice at their hands. It
survives among many members of the Roman and some
members of the Anglican Church, who have so strong a sense
of churchmanship that they can scarcely imagine their moral
and spiritual life as going on apart from the life of the religious
body to which they belong.

But in modern days any such feeling of churchmanship,
even any strong tie of nationality, must be in the main
voluntarily accepted. Of course countries exercise over their
inhabitants such discipline as is necessary to preserve outward
order, but I am not speaking merely of what is thus outward
but of idea and purpose. Any European can leave the citizen-
ship of his own country for that of America without sinking
in his own eyes or those of his relations. No one becomes a
moral outcast if he leaves one religious community for another.
Men are not born into a church as bees are born into a hive,
or as men in the twelfth century were born into Christendom.
So the sense of a corporate life, however strong in individuals,
is of the nature of an enthusiasm consciously adopted and
imposed from within rather than from without. We are in-
dividuals in the first place, members of families in the second
place, members of a church only in the third or fourth place.

This state of things may be temporary, and may not be
destined even to long survival. Our days have certainly seen
a strong revival of the principle of nationality, which is likely
to become still more potent; and on the revival of nationality
will follow a sense of spiritual community which may by
degrees impose itself from without upon men.

THE CORPORATE CONSCIENCE 505

It is a sign of the extreme individualism of this age thai
when we look for authority of the old kind in religious matters
we scarcely know where to find it. In history it is con-
spicuous enough And in history it takes two forms, accord-
ingly as the State is regarded as a spiritual authority, or as a
secular body only, while the Church takes its place in matters
spiritual.

In the ancient republics of Greece and Italy, as is well
known, there was no clear line of division between Church and
State. At Athens it was a capital offence either to introduce
new cults from abroad, or to turn men away from the worship
of the established deities. Under the Roman Empire those
who refused to sacrifice to the deity established hy the State,
the reigning Emperor, were liable to be put to death. In the
Middle Ages the distinction between secular and spiritual
authority was gradually established, and the Church learned
to rely more on the weapons of penance, interdict, and excom-
munication, which were properly her own ; and so long as it
was generally believed that she held the keys of the future
life, these weapons were very effectual. But at most periods
she was willing on occasion to resort to the assistance of the
secular arm, and in the days of her failing power, by
means of the institution of the Inquisition, she deliberately
endeavoured to coerce men into orthodoxy by temporal
punishments.

In countries where the connection of Church and State has
been recognised, religious persecution has continued. Very
recently Dissenters in England suffered from various disquali-
fications. To-day in Eussia Nihilists and even Old Believers
are liable to severe persecution for opinion. ISTo doubt the
persecution would be justified on the ground that these creeds
undermine the stability of the Russian state : and it is to be
observed that it was precisely on these grounds that the
Roman Emperors persecuted Christianity. Of course when
Church and State are closely connected, one of them cannot
be attacked without injury coming to the other.

In the countries in which the Church is less closely allied
to the State, notably the Catholic countries of Southern Europe,
the threat of excommunication has still some terrors, because it

506 EXPLORATIO EVANGELICA

conveys a prospect of social exclusion. Where the Chinch
has not power to terrify men, she calls in the aid of secular
society. But after all she is powerless against the resolute
man of blameless life : a Frenchman or Italian may give
open expression to views of an extreme character without fear
of losing his place in the service of government or in parlia-
ment, or losing the confidence and respect of his fellow-
citizens.

It is easy to account for the general lack of spiritual dis-
cipline in northern Europe. The disorganised and chaotic state
of belief has reduced spiritual penalties to powerlessness. If
any man, not of criminal or abandoned character, is expelled
from one branch of the Church he can always join another ; or
if he prefers to remain outside any Christian organisation he
suffers nothing thereby in the eyes of society. And states in
our clays confine themselves in the main to the preservation of
material order, and do not regard any of the current forms of
belief as so anti-national or anti-social as to call for the inter-
ference of secular authority.

It is, however, certain that the present state of things is
temporary. Individualism in politics and religion has reached
its utmost limit ; and there are on all hands indications that
before long the tide will set strongly in the direction of
solidarity. The freedom of the individual both in Church and
State has been nursed and flattered at the cost of the general
good : before long the general good must overbear the freedom
of individuals. States will become more socialistic, as in fact
they are becoming while we look at them. The common
voice of the Christian Church, however that Church in the
future may be organised, should more and more make itself
heard.

So long as a state regards the maintenance of order as its
main function, it will have no reason for persecuting any class
of believers, unless, like the dynamitards of France, they wage
war upon the property and lives of their neighbours. But
when tin! body politic is inspired by any higher or more
spiritual purpose, its toleration must needs become less broad.
The persecution of the Mormons in the United States must be
justified by the contention thai monogamy is one of the Lnsti-

THE CORPORATE CONSCIENCE 5°7

tutione essentia] to a Christian or a civilised 3tate< The
expulsion of the Jews from certain provinces of Russia must
be defended on the ground that the Russian people embody
a certain principle of nationality, and thai the development of
that principle is thwarted by the presence < if an alien minority
who do not recognise itsvalue. And without any interference
of the State it seems to 1"' a tendency of the white and black
population in the southern part of the United States to drift
apart.

It is likely that some of those who have read with
sympathy thus far will lie surprised, and may be displeased, to
find that the principles of this book are really strongly in
favour of the revival of collective control. Such is certainly
the fact. So long as religious doctrine is regarded as matter
of inference from certain statements of supersensual truth or
certain passages of the Bible, wrong doctrine may show
defective powers of reasoning, hut does not seem to be con-
nected with action, with merit, and with sin. But if religious
doctrine be really the intellectual statement of principles of
conduct, it at once appears to have an ethical bearing. Any
church worthy of the name must define, as did the Church of
old, not merely the principles of conduct to be followed by the
members, but also in some degree the beliefs which they
shall accept, and the rejection of which shall be followed by
their expulsion from the society. The inherent weakness of
societies, which, like the American Ethical Society, try to
secure uniformity of conduct without common belief will
become transparent. At the same time the freedom of modern
thought, and the weakness which necessarily belongs to the
form, the intellectual element, in doctrine, will prevent the
enforcement in the future of any such elaborate system of
creed as the articles of the Church of England or the West-
minster Confession. Nor are future creeds likely to contain
any statements as to matters properly belonging to physical
science or to history.

It is a fundamental fact in regard to all living bodies that
they endeavour to expel from their substance foreign matter
which does not feel the same living pulse, and which hinders
free growth and activity. And as beliefs embody the vital

508 EXPLORATIO EVANGELIC A

principles which inform societies, no society is bound to
tolerate within itself a belief which is fatal to the law of its
being. No wise man would wish to revive religious persecution
in the true sense of the word, for persecution implies belief in
the possession of absolute truth combined with vindictive
feeling. But the more there is of common moral and spiritual
life in a community, the less will it be able to bear with
patience the existence in its midst of ideas and beliefs which
thwart that life. A homogeneous state might be justified by
the first and deepest of all laws, the law of self-preservation, in
expelling from its borders heterogeneous elements, ft might
well, in doing so, expel the better and retain the worse,
and might in consequence suffer bitter penalties. But the
crime then would lie not in expelling what was heterogeneous,
but in failing to recognise its goodness and to grow like it.

In the same way any church which is really a church
must possess a certain power of discipline over its members,
expelling those wrho are obdurately hostile to its principles of
action, and suspending or otherwise correcting those members
who have failed in their duty towards it, but are willing to
submit to the corporate control. But, of course, any such
revival of discipline involves as a preliminary a revival of
belief, and an outpouring of religious enthusiasm.

Certainly none of the forms of organisation at present
existing in Christendom is perfect. All have profound
defects : all are adapted to this or that country, this or that
type of mind. None has divine right ; but all have a certain
right dc facto, as evolved out of human necessities, and as
meeting definite means. There is none of them which does
not embody some aspect or form of the ideal church : if they
ceased to do so they would lose their principle of vitality,
would become mere dead bodies. Some are doubtless destined
to survive and grow; others to perish. Episcopacy lias a
natural affinity with monarchical government; the Presby-
terian and Wesleyan bodies may lie compared to Republics;
the Baptist and Independent Churches are more like small
democracies, such as those of ancient Greece and mediaeval
Italy. We may consider which of them is the best fur the
community t<> which we belong; hut. after all, our opinions

THE CORPORATE CONSCIENCE 509

iii.- worth bul little, and the great test of vitality is worth
more than any reasoni

It is in reelesiastieal as in national matters. No national

type is perfect, but each exhibits some virtues and some
failings. We are burn into one or other of these nationalities.
ami to that we naturally adhere, striving, it may be, to develop
the excellences and to correct the defects which especially
belong to it. It is easiei to change one's church than one's
nationality; hut in the great majority of cases a man is wiser
if he adheres to the church of his fathers, and tries to use such
talent as he may possess somewhat to raise its level.

Any church which is to live in the future must be, like the
church of the past when it was more potent, not merely the
vehicle of fixed traditions, and the repository of revealed doctrine,
but a commonwealth, the expression of the wills and the ideals
of the multitudes who are members of it. The way in which
the general will is expressed is a matter of politics. To one

• monarchic, to another oligarchic, to another democratic
ecclesiastical government may be most suitable. What is
essential is that the voice of the Church should embody its
ideas and speak the will of its members ; not the passing
caprices of the majority, but the deep convictions of the best.

It is clear that it is impossible in this place further to
pursue the question of the revival of collective control. The
question is one of politics and statesmanship, and when society
is ready for the change, no doubt great ecclesiastical statesmen
will arise capable of dealing with it. At present it would be
mere otiose speculation to try to see further into the future.
The rapid growth of such societies as the Christian Social
Union shows that the process of crystallisation has begun
among us, and it may be that that process is destined to
proceed with a rapidity which will astonish those who regard
religion as a matter cprite private between the soul and its
Maker.

CHAPTER XL

SUMMARY

As the subject of this work has been wide, and the argument
somewhat complicated, it may be desirable to give here a brief
summary of the course of the book, especially since, in a work
like the present, an index would be almost useless.

In Chapter I. are sketched the difficulties which at present
impede religious belief. In Protestant countries these difficul-
ties arise mainly from the growth of historic criticism, which
is especially fatal to received notions as regards the Bible, and
necessitates a reconstruction of foundations. The only possil tie
new foundation is religious psychology in conjunction with the
history of religious ideas.

In Chapters II. III. and IV. the psychology of religious
belief is briefly set forth. The basis of religion is experience,
in particular the experience of sin and its removal, and of the
answer to prayer. On such experiences must be based, in the
first place, an intense conviction of a Power within which works
for righteousness, and in the second place all assertions as to
the divine attributes. By the same mental process which dis-
closes to us other selves in the world, we reach the assertion
of an objective Deity who is good, who answers prayer, and
whose being includes personality.

Chapters V. and VI. dwell on the truth that religious
doctrine, being thus reached through experience and not by
reasoning, must not be used as a material for speculative con-
struction. The truths of religion are not speculatively valid :
tlnir validity is universally subjective and practically objective.

SUMMARY

Religious metaphysics Leads to Insoluble contradictions; yet
intellectual illusiou may, like other forms of illusion, lead to
happiness in life. Bui the only religioD which can be secured
against scepticism is relative religion, religion as revealed to
man, and as adapted to the human environment.

Chapters VII. and VIII. trace in the field of history the
working of the same phenomena which previous chapters had
considered in relation to individual experience. Eistory, like
conduct, reveals a Tower working for righteousness. The
activities of this Power we choose to designate by the phrase
"divine ideas"; but il must be understood that the word
" idea " here signifies a working impulse, not a mental concept.
The divine ideas work first on the will, then on the intellect
and aesthetic faculties, leading to desire, to doctrine, to art, and
to organisation. The determination of the working ideas as
good, temporary, and had, is a matter of the utmost difficulty ;
we can only venture to say that ideas which lead to the
destruction of society are bad, those which tend to the preserva-
tion of society must contain good elements.

Chapters IX. and X. contain the germs of those that
follow. We try to trace the ways in which the ideas are
intellectually embodied in the world. In primitive times they
are commonly embodied in myth, myth being usually etio-
logical in character. Ethical impulses give rise to myths in
accordance with national character, and the fittest myths sur-
vive. The myth is purely indefinite, without relation to time ;
as the age of myths passes away, three outgrowths take its
place, related to time, past, present, and future. In relation
to the past, the ideas are embodied in ethical history, into
which myth passes by imperceptible gradations. In relation
to the future, the ideas are embodied in prophecy, which is of
quite a different character from modern scientific prediction.
In relation to the present, the ideas are embodied in parable ;
and then in doctrine, which is a statement of relative truth in
regard to the supersensual world.

With Chapter XI. we pass from the statement of general
principles to the origins of Christianity. An analysis of the
early Christian creed shows that it contains: (1) statements
as to the life of the Founder, that is, ideal history; (2) pro-

EX PL OR A TIG E VA NGEL1CA

phecies as to the future ; (3) statements as to the facts of the
spiritual life, or doctrine proper. We proceed to consider
these articles in relation to the documents of early Christianity,
in relation to pre-Christian history, and in some degree in
relation to Christian experience ; but not in relation to theo-
logic construction.

Chapter XII. considers in some detail the manner of em-
bodiment of ideas in history. We contrast history as now
understood with the ideal histories of the past. Modern
historic criticism is an exceedingly destructive force, and is
apt to insufficiently recognise the value of the ideal element
in past history. In historic construction, on the other hand,
the modern doctrine of evolution is of untold value.

In Chapters XIII. and XIV. we consider the subjective
elements to be allowed for in the Gospels. The tendency
to build history on a doctrinal basis is not prominent in the
Synoptists, but we trace on every page the results of contro-
versy as to the Messiahship of Jesus, which tends to make the
doings of the Founder correspond to prophecy. The spiritual
experience of the early disciples also largely influences the
Synoptic narrative. The third and fourth Gospels show con-
siderable influence of literary style, especially of the conven-
tion universally received in historic works of introducing
speeches to indicate a situation and of dialogue to emphasise
teaching. Thus it is not possible to extract from the Gospels
an objective life of Jesus ; but his teaching as given in the
Synoptists is generally authentic.

Chapter XV. dwells on the fact that, to the contem-
poraries of Jesus, the burning question was whether lie was
or was not the Messiah. He seems to have claimed the title ;
but to have accepted it in quite a different fashion from his
contemporaries, as a call to suffering. We may find a key to
his claim in the title Son of Man.

Chapters XVI. and XVII. deal briefly with the teaching
of Jesus as given by the Synoptists. The key-stone of bis
ethics lay in the relation between the human and the divine
will ; thus ethics was merged in religion. The more detailed
Legislation of the Sermon <>n the Mount is partly a spiritualisa-
tion of the Mosaic law, partly a supersession of it. It is of

SUMMARY 513

such a character that it can be taken literally only by small

societies, but in spirit by Christians generally. The instruc-
tion as to the spiritual life is conveyed partly in a series of
apparent paradoxes, which are, however, the expression of higher
truth, partly by means of parables. The early Christians seem
Bometimes to have distorted the meaning of these parables, by
interpreting them in reference to a speedy Advent: but
primarily in most cases they refer to the facts of the spiritual
life in the experience of individuals.

Chapters XVIII. to XX. bring us to the subject of Chris-
tian miracles, which modern thought cannot accept as objective.
We must, however, distinguish between such phenomena as
those of faith-healing, which abound in the Gospels and are
not properly miraculous, and miracles proper, which are rare.
The Petrine narrative, both in Acts and Gospels, has an attrac-
tion for the miraculous. In Mark's Gospel, notwithstanding,
there are only three or four miracles proper, which may be
explained in a variety of ways. Such events always, in popular
report, attend the rise of a religion. In Chapter XIX. are
considered the accounts given in Matthew and Luke of the
miraculous birth. The unsatisfactory character of these tales
is shown, and it is maintained that the story of the Virgin-
birth is not part of the oldest Christian teaching, that it was
not accepted by Paul and the Fourth Evangelist, that such
tales have been told of many great leaders, and would be
likely, whether true or not, to cluster round the cradle of
Jesus. In Chapter XX. our accounts of the physical resurrec-
tion and ascension are in like manner put to the test, and
found to be inconsistent one with another, and intertwined
with false scientific views. To the spiritual presence of the
Founder among his disciples we have undeniable testimony ;
but the tales which insist on a physical presence are unsatis-
factory. The tales in regard to a physical ascension are still
less acceptable. The tenets of the Virgin-birth and the
resurrection of the body have been maintained by great
authorities to be no part of the earliest Christian teaching,
and they were rejected by the Synod of the Church of Prussia
in 1846.

In Chapter XXI. the story of the descent into Hades is

33

514 EXPLORATIO EVANGELIC A

considered. It is shown to be due to the influence of Greek
thought of the Orphic School, an indication of the origin of the
mediaeval notions of Heaven and Hell.

In Chapter XXII. Christian prophecy, especially that in
relation to the Second Advent, is considered. This seems to
have been the result of the passing into Christianity of the
Jewish beliefs in a national deliverer. The passages in the
Synoptists in which Jesus foretells his own Advent are
certainly largely adulterated by current Jewish thought : it
is possible they may originate in parable. In the Fourth
Gospel, materialist views on the subject are directly opposed.
The belief in a near Advent was universal among early
Christians, and of the greatest practical value ; but it gradually
gave way to the Greek doctrine of a supersensual heaven and
a judgment of souls.

With Chapter XXIII. we reach the crisis of Christianity,
which took place at the death of the Founder. The bare
historic view of him needs enlarging, because of his continued
presence with his disciples. These remained at Jerusalem,
and became militant ; and their teaching developed under
what they claimed to be the direct inspiration of their Head.
Into the current teaching flowed two streams, one reformed
Jewish, one Greek cosmopolitan, both of which were absorbed
and consecrated.

Chapter XXIV. gives a brief account of the literature of
the early Church, excluding the Gospels. The character of
the Acts in particular is examined, and the varying value of
its component parts set forth.

In Chapter XXV. the mode of embodiment of the ideas
in doctrine is considered. The relations between history and
doctrine as parallel recipients of ideas are set forth, and ex-
amples taken from Greece and Judaea. Three examples are
taken to illustrate the rise and the nioralisation of doctrine,
namely, the history of prayer, of purity, and of the desire of
salvation. The necessity for formulating doctrine is dwelt on.

Chapter XXVI. dwells on the relations, or rather the

parallelisms, between early Christiai doctrine 1 the teaching

of tin' Greek thiasi, societies dedicated to the worship of the
imported deities of later Greece, such as Sabazius, Isis. and

SUMMARY 515

Mithras. Ii ifl shown that these societies embodied principally
two ideas, that of purity, ritual or moral, and that of salvation,
both in the future and the present Life. They were secret in
character, and they appealed to the individual rather than t<>

the city or the (dan. In all these respects the Christianity <>l'
the early Church, diverging from tin- doctrine of the Founder,
moved in the direction of the ideas of the thiasi. Direcl
influence of the Pagan mysteries on Christianity belongs to a

later time ; but from the apostolic age the ideas of the thiasi
appear in Christian doctrine. To some extent a bridge was
offered by the beliefs of the Hellenistic Jews.

( hapter XXVI I. describes the influence of Greek philosophy
on Christian doctrine. Philosophy was the intellectual atmo-
sphere of the time, from which no writer could free himself.
liemarkable parallelisms exist between the Sermon on the
Mount and Paul's Epistles on the one hand, and the writings
of Seneca on the other, showing not borrowing, but similar
influences. Philosophy in the early Eoman age had altered
its character, and grown nearer to religion and mysticism.
But the neglect of physical science had caused it to be weak
on the side of the knowledge of phenomena ; and it was per-
verted by an insufficient theory of the will, and a want of the
recognition of the relativity of all knowledge.

Chapter XXYIII. treats of the criticism of doctrine. Our
criticism is an attempt to explain existing fact, and does not
bring danger to religious facts, but only to religious theories.
As regards the ideas themselves, criticism has but little ap-
plication ; the tests are practical : that of suitability to the
environment and that of survival. As regards the expression
of idea in doctrine criticism is necessary, in consecpiienee of
our progress in science and psychology, especially our accept-
ance of evolution and our better understanding of the nature
of will.

Chapter XXIX. deals with the influence exercised on
Christian doctrine by the most important strain in ancient
religion, the custom of acrifice. Sacrifice is of three kinds :
(1) donatory, passing upwards into Christian charity; (2)
piacular, which largely moulded the Christian doctrine of re-
demption ; (3) mystic, n Inch greatly influenced the Christian

516 EX PLO RATIO EVANGELICA

communion. The evolution in Christianity was not on one
line, but on many parallel lines : among various Christian
bodies we find both lower and higher embodiments of the
original ideas.

Chapters XXX. to XXXII. deal with early Christologic
doctrine. The basis of the doctrine of the Incarnation is not
merely historical, but also experiential. It had pre-Christian
roots both in Jewish speculation and Greek philosophy. The
logos doctrine is the form it takes in Philo and John. Paul's
Christologic doctrine insists on the pre-existence and the ex-
altation of his Master. The writer of Hebrews regards him as
the great High Priest. Germs of more advanced doctrine exist
in Colossians. The basis of the doctrine in all forms is a possible
and actual harmony between the divine and human will.
Older forms confuse will and intellect ; modern forms dwell
more on the perfect will of Jesus. Of the doctrine of the
Atonement, the historic basis is the non-miraculous cruci-
fixion : what is added to this comes from the experience of
individuals and the Church. The doctrine starts from the
piacular sacrifices of barbarians, and is developed by Isaiah
into the belief that the suffering of the righteous does
away the sin of the people. Paul's doctrine of Atonement
twofold, historic and mystic ; the former breaks down when
the Fall is allowed to be non- historic. The experiential
ground of the doctrine is the sense of sin and its removal by
inoculation from a divine life and death. The doctrine of
justification by faith is another side of the same doctrine. The
doctrine of the exalted Christ is due especially to Paul. Paul,
however, does not advocate prayer to Christ; but Christian
experience shows that such prayer is answered. There is
great danger in drawing any metaphysical conclusion from
this fact: the doctrine of the exalted Christ rests not on
reasoning, but directly on experience, and is closely related
to the doctrine of Christian immortality.

Chapter XXXIII. criticises the supposed visible historic
manifestations of the Holy Spirit, which are shown to be of
Legendary character. For the inward revelation of the Spirit
there is abundant testimony. Imt the early Church soon
began to adopt an exclusive and a materialist view of the

SUMMARY 517

working of the spirit : a view which may have been at the
time accessary, but La now a stumbling-block. At the end
of the chapter the question is briefly considered whether
the doctrine of the Trinity also is not fundamentally
experiential

Chapter XXXIV. is devoted to an examination of the
Christian doctrine of the future life. The belief in a future
existence extremely ancient ; made ethical by the Egyptians,
;in<l in the mystic religion of Greece. The Jews developed
the view of a Messiah and a millennial reign on earth; the
Greek philosophers held the soul to be immortal. The
Founder of Christianity spoke little of the future life; his
utterances as recorded are not in accord with modern popular
beliefs. In the early Church the doctrine developed first in
the Jewish, and later in the Creek direction. Modern beliefs
as to the future life necessarily full of illusion ; but psychology
inculcates disbelief in death. And the vague outlines sug-
gested by philosophy are filled out by the Christian doctrines
of the divine providence and the exalted Christ.

Chapter XXXV., on baptism, starts from the purification
by water among various peoples. Christianity seems to have
borrowed the rite from John the Baptist, to which the early
Church added the formula "into the name of Jesus Christ";
the Trinitarian formula later. The belief in the supernatural
efficacy of baptism was connected with the descent of the
dove at the baptism of Jesus, from which event some of the
earliest Christian teachers, including apparently the Fourth
Evangelist, dated their Master's exaltation. Paul had a view
of his own on the subject ; he raised the doctrine to a mystic
level. In the orthodox Church infant baptism gradually made
way, and confirmation took the place of adult baptism.
The laying on of hands was a Jewish rite adopted into
Christianity.

Chapter XXXVI. shows that the question of the historic
origin of the Communion is surrounded by impenetrable
difficulties. John speaks of the historic supper as a Paschal
meal; Paul speaks of the Communion as revealed to himself.
The Synoptists do not speak of any rite as founded by Jesus,
nor is any rite mentioned in the Acts. The sacramental doctrine

518 EXPLORATIO EVANGELICA

as developed in the Church belonged to the Pauline or mystic
circle of ideas, but became greatly materialised. The basis of
the Christian Communion in experience is unassailable.

Chapter XXXVII. treats of the inspiration of Scripture.
This doctrine was directly adopted from the Jews. Jesus did
not attach the same veneration to the words of Scripture as
did his early disciples. This veneration, both in Jews and
Christians, was based on experience. It was gradually extended
from the Old Testament to the New. Biblical infallibility
cannot be upheld ; yet it was based upon facts, as is clearly
shown in the history of modern Protestantism, which translates
Scripture from the past into the present. Eegarding Scripture
from the external and critical point of view, it claims our
veneration, first as classical in religion, second as inspired,
and third as the accompaniment of the life of the Church.
The Gospels come to us as adapted to functions not developed
at the time of their appearance. Parallels to the modern
change in the view of Scripture may be found in cases of the
Apostles' Creed and the Homeric poems.

Chapter XXXVIII. considers the Church. We must
distinguish between the Churches, which were early organised
on a plan originally Greek, and the ideal Church. The
organisation was on an Episcopal basis, and was necessary in
the circumstances ; but it was the occasion of much perversion
of history and of many sacerdotal innovations. The notion of
the Catholic Church starts from the new Jerusalem of the
Jews. The ideal society is called by Jesus the Kingdom
of Heaven, by Paul the body or the bride of Christ ; the notion
of a visible Church dates from the third century. Our view
is that since the Eeformation it has become impossible to
define the limits of the visible Church : the various religious
bodies representing different sides of Christianity. The history
of the Church is valuable alike to all.

Chapter XXXIX. is added to meet the possible objection
that the tendency of the present work is too individualist
in regard to the formation of doctrine. First the necessity of
the individualist view is dwelt on, and then the enlargements
which the, individual point of view must receive from the
tdmony of the wise, from Bacred scriptures, and from the

SUMMARY 5 '9

voice of the Church. It is shown that the community as
well as the individual embodies beliefs and ideas, and that it
has .1 necessary right to expel any member who is out of
harmony with those ideas. Thus any great revival of religious
belief must aeeds be accompanied by a revival of ecclesiastical
discipline and the hardening of organisation.

Such has been the argument of this book. It is for the
reader to judge how far the programme laid down at the
beginning has been accomplished. My task has been occasion-
ally of a constructive character, as in a few of the opening
chapters, and occasionally, against my wish, of a destructive
character. But it has been in the main neither the one nor
the other, but critical. I have tried to clear away the
accumulation of the dust of ages which lies about the founda-
tions of the Christian Creed, and to see wherein that foundation
really consists, and what kind of superstructure it is capable
of supporting. To build any such superstructure is not in my
plan. I conceive that many structures of Christian faith,
differing by race, by historic tendency, by personal pre-
possession, might all justify themselves to a criticism such as
I have endeavoured to develop. It is not a particular set of
beliefs that I have advocated, but a particular way of found-
ing and of regarding belief. I have tried to show that
religious beliefs, like all the active principles of our lives, can
only be justified when they are based on reality and experience,
and can only lead to success and happiness when they are
suited to their environment, psychological, intellectual, and
spiritual.

The way of regarding religion which is wholly inconsistent
with the views of this book is what I have called the way of
absolute religion, the view that Christianity was sent into the
world fully equipped and complete, supported by a series of
miracles, and not to be approached by the ordinary principles
of reason which we apply to other practical affairs of life.
The phenomena of religion must be investigated by different
faculties and on different lines from those in use in the science
of the visible and tangible, but yet they must be investigated,
and such investigation is the due basis for a religious creed.

520 EXPLORATIO EVANGELIC A

Spiritual experience, I have maintained, lies at the roots
of all the teaching of the Founder of Christianity. Further,
spiritual experience lies at the roots of the teaching of Paul
and the other founders of Christian doctrine. The spiritual
experience of Christians has in all ages been the basis of their
creed, so far as it has been a living faith and not a dry meta-
physical construction. The Creed of to-day, if it is to be a
reality for men of to-day, must also be based upon experience,
such experience as has been common to Christians of past
times.

Doctrine is based on experience. But the formulation of
doctrine is an intellectual process, which necessarily proceeds
according to the intellectual conditions of various ages, and so
current doctrine is full of error and of illusion. Human
history is full of inspiration, but the inspiration is adapted to
the conditions of an age or, at the highest, to the permanent
limitations of human nature. If at any time an authoritative
creed is put forth it may for a time be an aid to faith, but
must of necessity, amid changing intellectual conditions, in
time become a drag upon the wheels of religion. In ages of
spiritual stagnation it will be easily accepted, but the new
wine of fresh inspiration cannot always with success be put
into old bottles.

The value of authority in creed, as in other spheres of life,
I should be the last to deny. But a creed accepted on
authority is only living so far as it is made real in the
experience of him who accepts it. And when there is a
conflict, either in a society or an individual, between creed as
handed down by authority on the one hand, and experience
and testimony on the other, it is the authority which must
give way.

Never, perhaps, in the course of history has there been
a more instructive battle between authority on one side and
evidence and reason on the other, than in the recent Dreyfus
trial at Tlennes. The attitude taken in regard to that trial
by the whole civilised world outside France shows astonish in-
unanimity. The respect for fact and evidence, the contempt
for the mere assertions of men in high position, seem to have
spread everywhere to a degree of which few can have been

SUMMARY 521

aware. I'" prefer authority to evidence has been universally
branded as a crime and an abomination. It is true thai the
authority concerned in the Iheyfus case was military and not
clerical. But the principle is the Bame: it was by a true
instinct that all the strong clerical intluences of France were
ranged against the accused. Newman was fond of the saying,
writs judical orbis terrarwm." If this saying be trustworthy,
the security which comes from universal assent belongs in our
11 a supreme degree to that which can be proved, to that
which is based on reality, whatever may be the objections of
policy, authority, or expediency.

THE END

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